Need to Install InfluxDB on CentOS 7?

InfluxDB allows us to store a huge volume of time-series data.

Advantages of using InfluxDB can be considered from its scalability to the simple query syntax it has along with the advantage of not using any external dependencies.

At Bobcares we often get requests from our customers to install InfluxDB on CentOS 7 as a part of our Server Management Services.

Today let’s see how our Support Engineers do this for our customers.

How to Install InfluxDB on CentOS 7

InfluxDB is a time series, metrics, and analytics database. It contains data such as system metrics and application metrics.

In this article, we will see how to install InfluxDB, a real-time powerful monitoring framework that provides a historical analysis can be made using InfluxDB.

InfluxDB organizes data on disk into immutable runs of values for a single column of a series. InfluxDB now includes Flux, a powerful language that allows developers to see across time.

We will need a 64-bit CentOS 7 server with a sudo non-root user along with 4GB swap space, and at least a 2GB RAM and 2 procs as prerequisites.

The following are the steps that our Support Techs follow to do this setup.

1.  Installing and configuring InfluxDB

1. We can use the following commands to install InfluxDB first.

$ sudo yum -y update
$ sudo yum -y install https://s3.amazonaws.com/influxdb/influxdb-latest-1.x86_64.rpm

2. For disabling anonymous data reporting and extending the read-timeout limit we will customize the InfluxDB configuration after taking a backup of the original conf file.

$ sudo cp /opt/influxdb/shared/config.toml /opt/influxdb/shared/config.toml_backup

3. Then we will minimize the bandwidth usage by disabling reporting, as InfluxDB reports anonymous data once every 24 hours.

$ sudo nano /opt/influxdb/shared/config.toml

Change ‘reporting-disabled’ to true

reporting-disabled = true

4. After that we will increase the default read-timeout slightly.

$ sudo nano /opt/influxdb/shared/config.toml

read-timeout = "10s"

5. We can save and close the file, then start the InfluxDB daemon.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/influxdb start

6. Now we can take a browser and check  http://server_ip:8083  to see if InfluxDB is up and running.

[InfluxDB not running? We can help you!]

2.  Changing the Default InfluxDB Admin Credentials

1. To change the default InfluxDB admin credentials we will log into the InfluxDB UI using the default username ‘root’ and password ‘root’ in the Connect section.

2. And click the Connect button leaving the database portion blank.

3. From the top menu on the next page, click on Cluster Admins.

4. In the Username section, we have to click on root and change the password.

5. Then click the Change Password button after providing the desired password.

6. Finally, log out by clicking the Disconnect button, and try logging in with the newly set credentials.

3. Database Creation

Here we will create a database to store our metrics.

The steps to follow are given below:

1. First, click on the Databases menu from the top menu in the web UI.

2. Under Database Details in the Create a Database section, we will enter metrics as the database name.

3. We will keep the default options available in ‘Shared Spaces’  and click the Create Database button to create the database.

Once this is database is successfully created we can see it listed at the top of the screen next to the Explore Data link.

[Need assistance? We are happy to help you!]

Conclusion

To conclude we saw the steps that our Support Engineers follow to Install InfluxDB on CentOS 7.