InfluxDB Docs

v2.0

Get started with InfluxDB

The InfluxDB 2.0 time series platform is purpose-built to collect, store, process and visualize metrics and events. Start with InfluxDB Cloud 2.0, a fully managed and hosted version of InfluxDB 2.0, or InfluxDB OSS 2.0 (beta), the open source version of InfluxDB 2.0.

Start with InfluxDB Cloud Start with InfluxDB OSS

See Differences between InfluxDB Cloud and InfluxDB OSS.

Start with InfluxDB Cloud 2.0

Start for free

Start using InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 at no cost with the Free Plan. Use it as much and as long as you like within the plan’s rate-limits. Limits are designed to let you monitor 5-10 sensors, stacks or servers comfortably.

Sign up

  1. Choose one of the following:

    • Subscribe through InfluxData
      To subscribe to an InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 Free Plan through InfluxData, go to InfluxDB Cloud 2.0.

      • To use social sign-on, click Continue with Google. Note that Google social sign-on does not support email aliases.

      • Sign up with email by entering your name, email address, and password, then click Create Account.

    If you originally signed up with email but want to enable social sign-on, you can do so by logging in through Google as long as you use the same email address.

    • Subscribe through a cloud provider
      To subscribe to an InfluxDB Cloud Usage-Based plan and pay through your Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account:

      • AWS
        Sign in to AWS, navigate to the InfluxDB Cloud product on AWS Marketplace, and follow the prompts to subscribe. After you click Set Up Your Account, enter your credentials, and then click Start Now. All usage charges will be paid through the subscribed AWS account.

      • GCP
        Sign in to GCP, navigate to the InfluxDB Cloud product on GCP Marketplace, and follow the prompts to subscribe. After you click Set Up Your Account, enter your credentials, and then click Start Now. All usage charges will be paid through the subscribed GCP account.

      Currently, we do not support using an existing InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 account to sign up for an InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 plan through AWS or GCP Marketplaces.

  2. If you signed up with your email address, InfluxDB Cloud requires email verification to complete the sign up process. Verify your email address by opening the email sent to the address you provided and clicking Verify Your Email.

  3. (If you subscribed through InfluxData) Choose your cloud provider.

  4. Select a provider and region for your InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 instance. The following are available:

    • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
      • US West (Oregon)
      • EU Frankfurt
    • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
      • US Central (Iowa)
    • Microsoft Azure
      • West Europe

    To suggest regions to add, click Let us know under Regions.

  5. (If you subscribed through InfluxData) Review the terms of the agreement, and then select I have viewed and agree to InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 Services Subscription Agreement and InfluxData Global Data Processing Agreement. For details on the agreements, see the InfluxDB Cloud 2.0: Services Subscription Agreement and the InfluxData Global Data Processing Agreement.

  6. Click Finish. InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 opens with a default organization and bucket (both created from your email address).

    To update organization and bucket names, see Update an organization and Update a bucket.

All InfluxDB 2.0 documentation applies to InfluxDB Cloud unless otherwise specified. References to the InfluxDB user interface (UI) or localhost:9999 refer to your InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 UI.

(Optional) Download and install the influx CLI

To use the influx CLI to manage and interact with your InfluxDB Cloud instance, complete the following steps:

macOS Linux

Download influx CLI for macOS

Click the following button to download and install influx CLI for macOS.

influx CLI (macOS)

Unpackage the influx binary

Note: The commands below are examples. Adjust the file names, paths, and utilities to your own needs.

To unpackage the downloaded archive, double click the archive file in Finder or run the following command in a macOS command prompt application such Terminal or iTerm2:

# Unpackage contents to the current working directory
tar zxvf ~/Downloads/influxdb_client_2.0.0-beta.14_darwin_amd64.tar.gz

(Optional) Place the binary in your $PATH

If you choose, you can place influx in your $PATH or you can prefix the executable with ./ to run in place. If the binary is on your $PATH, you can run influx from any directory. Otherwise, you must specify the location of the CLI (for example, ./influxor path/to/influx).

Note: If you have the 1.x binary on your $PATH, moving the 2.0 binary to your $PATH will overwrite the 1.x binary because they have the same name.

# Copy the influx binary to your $PATH
sudo cp influxdb_client_2.0.0-beta.14_darwin_amd64/influx /usr/local/bin/

If you rename the binary, all references to influx in this documentation refer to the renamed binary.

Run influx CLI on macOS Catalina

If you’re running influx on macOS Catalina, you must manually authorize the InfluxDB binaries.

Now, you’re ready to Use the influx CLI.

Download influx CLI for Linux

Click one of the following buttons to download and install the influx CLI appropriate for your chipset.

influx CLI (amd64) influx CLI (arm)

Unpackage the influx binary

Note: The commands below are examples. Adjust the file names, paths, and utilities to your own needs.

# Unpackage contents to the current working directory
tar xvfz influxdb_client_2.0.0-beta.14_linux_amd64.tar.gz

(Optional) Place the binary in your $PATH

If you choose, you can place influx in your $PATH or you can prefix the executable with ./ to run in place. If the binary is on your $PATH, you can run influx from any directory. Otherwise, you must specify the location of the CLI (for example, ./influxor path/to/influx).

Note: If you have the 1.x binary on your $PATH, moving the 2.0 binary to your $PATH will overwrite the 1.x binary because they have the same name.

# Copy the influx and influxd binary to your $PATH
sudo cp influxdb_client_2.0.0-beta.14_linux_amd64/influx /usr/local/bin/

If you rename the binary, all references to influx in this documentation refer to the renamed binary.

Now, you’re ready to Use the influx CLI.

Sign in

Sign in to InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 using your email address and password.

Sign in to InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 now

Start working with your time series data

With InfluxDB Cloud setup, see Next steps for what to do next.

Start with InfluxDB OSS

Get started with InfluxDB OSS v2.0 by downloading InfluxDB, installing the necessary executables, and running the initial setup process.

macOS Linux Docker Kubernetes

Download and install InfluxDB v2.0 beta

Download InfluxDB v2.0 beta for macOS.

InfluxDB v2.0 beta (macOS)

Unpackage the InfluxDB binaries

To unpackage the downloaded archive, double click the archive file in Finder or run the following command in a macOS command prompt application such Terminal or iTerm2:

# Unpackage contents to the current working directory
tar zxvf ~/Downloads/influxdb_2.0.0-beta.14_darwin_amd64.tar.gz

(Optional) Place the binaries in your $PATH

If you choose, you can place influx and influxd in your $PATH or you can prefix the executables with ./ to run then in place.

# (Optional) Copy the influx and influxd binary to your $PATH
sudo cp influxdb_2.0.0-beta.14_darwin_amd64/{influx,influxd} /usr/local/bin/

Both InfluxDB 1.x and 2.x include influx and influxd binaries. If InfluxDB 1.x binaries are already in your $PATH, run the 2.0 binaries in place or rename them before putting them in your $PATH. If you rename the binaries, all references to influx and influxd in this documentation refer to your renamed binaries.

Networking ports

By default, InfluxDB uses TCP port 9999 for client-server communication over the InfluxDB HTTP API.

Start InfluxDB

Start InfluxDB by running the influxd daemon:

influxd

Run InfluxDB on macOS Catalina

macOS Catalina requires downloaded binaries to be signed by registered Apple developers. Currently, when you first attempt to run influxd or influx, macOS will prevent it from running. To manually authorize the InfluxDB binaries:

  1. Attempt to run the influx or influxd commands.
  2. Open System Preferences and click Security & Privacy.
  3. Under the General tab, there is a message about influxd or influx being blocked. Click Open Anyway.
  4. Repeat this process for both binaries.

We are in the process of updating our build process to ensure released binaries are signed by InfluxData.

See the influxd documentation for information about available flags and options.

Enable shell completion (Optional)

To install influx shell completion scripts, see influx completion.

InfluxDB “phone home”

By default, InfluxDB sends telemetry data back to InfluxData. The InfluxData telemetry page provides information about what data is collected and how it is used.

To opt-out of sending telemetry data back to InfluxData, include the --reporting-disabled flag when starting influxd.

influxd --reporting-disabled

Download and install InfluxDB v2.0 beta

Download the InfluxDB v2.0 beta package appropriate for your chipset.

InfluxDB v2.0 beta (amd64) InfluxDB v2.0 beta (arm)

Place the executables in your $PATH

Unpackage the downloaded archive and place the influx and influxd executables in your system $PATH.

Note: The following commands are examples. Adjust the file names, paths, and utilities to your own needs.

# Unpackage contents to the current working directory
tar xvzf path/to/influxdb_2.0.0-beta.14_linux_amd64.tar.gz

# Copy the influx and influxd binary to your $PATH
sudo cp influxdb_2.0.0-beta.14_linux_amd64/{influx,influxd} /usr/local/bin/

Both InfluxDB 1.x and 2.x include influx and influxd binaries. If InfluxDB 1.x binaries are already in your $PATH, run the 2.0 binaries in place or rename them before putting them in your $PATH. If you rename the binaries, all references to influx and influxd in this documentation refer to your renamed binaries.

Networking ports

By default, InfluxDB uses TCP port 9999 for client-server communication over the InfluxDB HTTP API.

Start InfluxDB

Start InfluxDB by running the influxd daemon:

influxd

See the influxd documentation for information about available flags and options.

Enable shell completion (Optional)

To install influx shell completion scripts, see influx completion.

InfluxDB “phone home”

By default, InfluxDB sends telemetry data back to InfluxData. The InfluxData telemetry page provides information about what data is collected and how it is used.

To opt-out of sending telemetry data back to InfluxData, include the --reporting-disabled flag when starting influxd.

influxd --reporting-disabled

Download and run InfluxDB v2.0 beta

Use docker run to download and run the InfluxDB v2.0 beta Docker image. Expose port 9999, which InfluxDB uses for client-server communication over the InfluxDB HTTP API.

docker run --name influxdb -p 9999:9999 quay.io/influxdb/influxdb:2.0.0-beta

To run InfluxDB in detached mode, include the -d flag in the docker run command.

InfluxDB “phone home”

By default, InfluxDB sends telemetry data back to InfluxData. The InfluxData telemetry page provides information about what data is collected and how it is used.

To opt-out of sending telemetry data back to InfluxData, include the --reporting-disabled flag when starting the InfluxDB container.

docker run -p 9999:9999 quay.io/influxdb/influxdb:2.0.0-beta --reporting-disabled

Console into the InfluxDB Container (Optional)

To use the influx command line interface, console into the influxdb Docker container:

docker exec -it influxdb /bin/bash

Install InfluxDB in a Kubernetes cluster

The instructions below use Minikube, but the steps should be similar in any Kubernetes cluster.

  1. Install Minikube.

  2. Start Minikube:

    minikube start

  3. Apply the sample InfluxDB configuration by running:

    kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/influxdata/docs-v2/master/static/downloads/influxdb-k8-minikube.yaml

    Always inspect YAML manifests before running kubectl apply -f <url>!

    This creates an influxdb Namespace, Service, and StatefulSet. A PersistentVolumeClaim is also created to store data written to InfluxDB.

  4. Ensure the Pod is running:

    kubectl get pods -n influxdb

  5. Ensure the Service is available:

    kubectl describe service -n influxdb influxdb

    You should see an IP address after Endpoints in the command’s output.

  6. Forward port 9999 from inside the cluster to localhost:

    kubectl port-forward -n influxdb service/influxdb 9999:9999

Set up InfluxDB

The initial setup process for InfluxDB walks through creating a default organization, user, and bucket. The setup process is available in both the InfluxDB user interface (UI) and in the influx command line interface (CLI).

UI Setup CLI Setup

Set up InfluxDB through the UI

  1. With InfluxDB running, visit localhost:9999.
  2. Click Get Started

Set up your initial user

  1. Enter a Username for your initial user.
  2. Enter a Password and Confirm Password for your user.
  3. Enter your initial Organization Name.
  4. Enter your initial Bucket Name.
  5. Click Continue.

InfluxDB is now initialized with a primary user, organization, and bucket. You are ready to write or collect data.

Use the influx CLI

To use the influx CLI after setting up InfluxDB, provide your authentication token, which is automatically generated during the setup process. For instructions on viewing your token via CLI or UI, see View tokens.

Use one of the following methods to provide your authentication token to the CLI:

  • Create a new InfluxDB connection configuration using the influx config create command.
  • Pass your token to the influx CLI using the -t or --token flag.

  • Set the INFLUX_TOKEN environment variable using your token.

    export INFLUX_TOKEN=oOooYourAuthTokenOoooOoOO==

See View tokens for information about retrieving authentication tokens.

Set up InfluxDB through the influx CLI

Begin the InfluxDB setup process via the influx CLI by running:

influx setup
  1. Enter a primary username.
  2. Enter a password for your user.
  3. Confirm your password by entering it again.
  4. Enter a name for your primary organization.
  5. Enter a name for your primary bucket.
  6. Enter a retention period for your primary bucket—valid units are nanoseconds (ns), microseconds (us or µs), milliseconds (ms), seconds (s), minutes (m), hours (h), days (d), and weeks (w). Enter nothing for an infinite retention period.
  7. Confirm the details for your primary user, organization, and bucket.

InfluxDB is now initialized with a primary user, organization, bucket, and authentication token. InfluxDB also creates a configuration profile for you so that you don’t have to add organization and token to every command. To view that config profile, use the influx config list command.

To continue to use InfluxDB via the CLI, you need the authentication token created during setup. To view the token, log into the UI with the credentials created above. (For instructions, see View tokens in the InfluxDB UI.)

You are ready to write or collect data.

To automate the setup process, use flags to provide the required information.

Next Steps

Collect and write data

Collect and write data to InfluxDB using the Telegraf plugins, the InfluxDB v2 API, the influx command line interface (CLI), the InfluxDB UI (the user interface for InfluxDB 2.0), or the InfluxDB v2 API client libraries.

Use Telegraf

Use Telegraf to quickly write data to InfluxDB Cloud 2.0. Create new Telegraf configurations automatically in the InfluxDB UI, or manually update an existing Telegraf configuration to send data to your InfluxDB Cloud instance.

For details, see Automatically configure Telegraf and Manually update Telegraf configurations.

Scrape data

InfluxDB OSS lets you scrape Prometheus-formatted metrics from HTTP endpoints. For details, see Scrape data.

API, CLI, and client libraries

For information about using the InfluxDB v2 API, influx CLI, and client libraries to write data, see Write data to InfluxDB.

Demo data

If using InfluxDB Cloud, add a demo data bucket for quick, free access to time series data.

Query data

Query data using Flux, the UI, and the influx command line interface. See Query data.

Process data

Use InfluxDB tasks to process and downsample data. See Process data.

Visualize data

Build custom dashboards to visualize your data. See Visualize data.

Monitor and alert

Monitor your data and sends alerts based on specified logic. See Monitor and alert.

Differences between InfluxDB Cloud and InfluxDB OSS

InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 is API-compatible and functionally compatible with InfluxDB OSS 2.0. The primary differences between InfluxDB OSS 2.0 and InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 are:

  • InfluxDB scrapers that collect data from specified targets are not available in InfluxDB Cloud.
  • InfluxDB Cloud instances are currently limited to a single organization.

New features in InfluxDB Cloud 2.0

  • Free Plan (rate-limited): Skip downloading and installing InfluxDB 2.0 and jump into exploring InfluxDB 2.0 technology. The Free Plan is designed for getting started with InfluxDB and for small hobby projects.
  • Flux support: Flux is a standalone data scripting and query language that increases productivity and code reuse. It is the primary language for working with data within InfluxDB 2.0. Flux can be used with other data sources as well, letting you work with data where it resides.
  • Unified API: Everything in InfluxDB (ingest, query, storage, and visualization) is now accessible using a unified InfluxDB v2 API that enables seamless movement between open source and cloud.
  • Integrated visualization and dashboards: Based on the pioneering Chronograf project, the new user interface (InfluxDB UI) offers quick and effortless onboarding, richer user experiences, and significantly quicker results.
  • Usage-based pricing: The Usage-based Plan offers more flexibility and ensures that you only pay for what you use.
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