InfluxDB is a open source time series database engine for ingesting real-time data. We will be deploying InfluxDB in Docker as its much easier than working with system services.
Deployment
First let’s build out the folder structure for InfluxDB on your host. This will allow us to persist data for InfluxDB between container updates.
# BASH [Linux VM] sudo mkdir /opt/containers/ && sudo mkdir /opt/containers/influxdb
# BASH [Linux VM] sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername /opt/containers
If you do not use the chown step above, you MUST append sudo
to the beginning of every command dealing with files / directories in /opt
!
Download the influxdb.conf file from github.
# BASH [Linux VM] curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/influxdata/influxdb/1.7/etc/config.sample.toml -o /opt/containers/influxdb/influxdb.conf
Create an internal docker network for service communication.
# BASH [Linux VM] docker network create --attachable InfluxNet
Copy the InfluxDB compose file from Github:
# BASH [Linux VM] curl https://bin.alexsguardian.net/raw/influxdb-compose -o /opt/containers/influxdb/influxdb-compose.yml
Deploy Influx via docker-compose
:
# BASH [Linux VM] docker-compose -f /opt/containers/influxdb/influxdb-compose.yml up -d
To see if its running you can run docker logs -f influxdb_influx_1
or run curl http://localhost:8086/ping
(CTRL+C exits the log view):


Creating an InfluxDB Admin User
Now that we have InfluxDB working correctly we need to secure it. First, create the new admin user:
# BASH [Linux VM] curl -XPOST http://localhost:8086/query --data-urlencode "q=CREATE USER root WITH PASSWORD 'password' WITH ALL PRIVILEGES"

We then need to edit the influxdb.conf file to enforce users to be authenticated in order to use our database. So stop influx:
# BASH [Linux VM] docker stop influxdb_influx_1
Then edit the influxdb.conf file:
# BASH [Linux VM] nano /opt/containers/influxdb/influxdb.conf
Find the [HTTP] section, un-comment and set auth-enabled
to true
. CTRL+X then Y
to save the file and then start InfluxDB:
# BASH [Linux VM] docker start influxdb_influx_1
Quickly check and see if authentication is working:
# BASH [Linux VM] curl -XPOST http://localhost:8086/query -u test:test --data-urlencode "q=SHOW DATABASES"

First Database
InfluxDB can be controlled via its HTTP API. This API allows us to create/edit/remove databases, users, retention polices, permissions, and even check the health of InfluxDB.
To create a database we need to first make sure we can hit the query API while authentication is enabled. Change the “user:password” section to the user you created above.
# BASH [Linux VM] curl -XPOST http://localhost:8086/query -u user:password --data-urlencode "q=SHOW DATABASES"

Since our next guide page will be Telegraf, we can go ahead and make the influx database for it. These steps can be used for other service’s databases as well. Create the database for Telegraf:
# BASH [Linux VM] curl -XPOST http://localhost:8086/query -u user:password --data-urlencode "q=CREATE DATABASE telegraf WITH DURATION 1d"

Now we need to create a user for Telegraf and grant it write privileges to the telegraf
database.
# BASH [Linux VM] curl -XPOST http://localhost:8086/query -u user:password --data-urlencode "q=CREATE USER telegraf WITH PASSWORD 'passwordhere'"

# BASH [Linux VM] curl -XPOST http://localhost:8086/query -u user:password --data-urlencode "q=GRANT ALL ON "telegraf" TO "telegraf""

