InfluxDB: Getting started

How to quickly set up and manage InfluxDB with best practices

👋 Welcome to the Stackhero documentation

Stackhero provides a fully managed InfluxDB cloud environment, designed for speed and simplicity:

• Unlimited writes, queries, dashboards, tasks, and buckets.
• Unlimited data retention: keep your metrics for as long as you need.
• Unlimited network and disk transfers, with no hidden limits.
• One-click updates: always benefit from the latest features and fixes.
• Consistent performance and enhanced security on your own private, dedicated infrastructure.

With Stackhero, you can focus on your data and analysis. Deploying InfluxDB cloud hosting only takes a few minutes, with every setup optimised for long-term reliability.

Managing InfluxDB users

InfluxDB does not offer user management directly via its web interface. You can efficiently manage user creation and administration using the InfluxDB CLI.

Using the InfluxDB CLI

You can access the InfluxDB CLI through Docker. For example, you can run the following command:

docker run -it influxdb:2.8 /bin/bash

Remember to use the version tag that matches your InfluxDB instance instead of 2.8.

After starting the container, create a configuration. Replace <XXXXXX>.stackhero-network.com with the actual domain of your InfluxDB instance:

influx config create \
  --config-name adminConfig \
  --active \
  --username-password admin \
  --org admin \
  --host-url https://<XXXXXX>.stackhero-network.com

Once the configuration is set up, you can use the InfluxDB CLI to manage users. For example, to create a new user:

influx user create --name <user> --password <password>

Preventing disk space saturation

InfluxDB is optimised for handling large volumes of time series data. Since it does not automatically delete old data, an unmanaged database can quickly fill up the available storage. Stackhero helps you avoid this by supporting InfluxDB’s native features for efficient data management.

InfluxDB provides two main solutions:

1. Retention policies: Automatically delete data older than a defined period, such as 365 days. This keeps your storage usage predictable and avoids manual clean-up.
2. Downsampling data: Retain high-resolution data for recent periods and aggregated data for older periods. For example:
   • Keep 1-second resolution for the last 5 minutes.
   • Store maximum, minimum, and average values at 1-minute intervals for the past 24 hours.
   • Retain hourly aggregates for older data.

Retention policies allow you to keep relevant historical data without consuming excessive disk space. For more information on downsampling, see the official InfluxDB downsampling documentation.

Configuring data retention in InfluxDB

By default, InfluxDB retains data indefinitely. For most time series use cases, setting a retention period for each bucket ensures you only keep the data you need and prevents uncontrolled storage growth.

To configure retention:

1. Open the InfluxDB web interface.
2. Go to "Data", then select "Buckets".
3. Click "Settings" next to the relevant bucket.
4. Under "Delete data older than", select your preferred retention period.

Data older than the selected retention period will be permanently deleted.

InfluxDB stores data in shards. Shards containing only expired data are deleted automatically. If a shard contains both expired and current data, it remains until all its data has expired. By default, a shard covers 7 days of data. When you set a new retention policy, up to nearly 7 days of outdated data may remain until the next shard cycle. For further details, refer to the InfluxDB shard documentation.

Sending data from Node.js to InfluxDB

You can find practical examples for sending data from Node.js to InfluxDB in this InfluxDB Getting Started repository.