# Graphite — Scalable Real-Time Graphing and Metrics Platform

> Graphite is a time-series monitoring platform that stores numeric data and renders graphs on demand, providing a flexible API for querying, transforming, and visualizing operational metrics.

## Install

Save in your project root:

# Graphite — Scalable Real-Time Graphing and Metrics Platform

## Quick Use
```bash
# Install via Docker Compose
docker run -d --name graphite 
  -p 80:80 -p 2003:2003 -p 2004:2004 
  graphiteapp/graphite-statsd

# Send a metric via plaintext protocol
echo "servers.web01.cpu.usage 42 $(date +%s)" | nc localhost 2003

# Query via the Render API
curl "http://localhost/render?target=servers.web01.cpu.usage&from=-1h&format=json"
```

## Introduction
Graphite, created in 2006, pioneered the modern metrics stack. It receives numeric time-series data, stores it efficiently with configurable retention, and exposes a powerful render API with hundreds of transformation functions for building graphs and dashboards.

## What Graphite Does
- Accepts metrics via plaintext, pickle, or AMQP protocols on well-known ports
- Stores time-series data with automatic rollup and retention policies (Whisper format)
- Provides a render API with 100+ functions for aggregation, math, and filtering
- Ships a built-in web UI (Graphite-web) for interactive graph exploration
- Feeds data to Grafana and other dashboarding tools via its native API

## Architecture Overview
Graphite has three components. Carbon is the daemon that receives metrics and writes them to disk. Whisper is a fixed-size database format (similar to RRD) that stores time-series data with multiple retention levels. Graphite-web is a Django application that reads Whisper files and renders graphs via the Render API. Carbon-relay and carbon-aggregator handle sharding and pre-aggregation at scale.

## Self-Hosting & Configuration
- Carbon config in `carbon.conf`: set `LINE_RECEIVER_PORT` (2003) and `MAX_CREATES_PER_MINUTE`
- Define retention schemas in `storage-schemas.conf` (e.g., `10s:6h,1m:7d,10m:1y`)
- Set aggregation methods in `storage-aggregation.conf` (sum, average, min, max)
- Scale horizontally with carbon-relay consistent-hashing across multiple carbon-cache instances
- Use Graphite-web or Grafana as the frontend query and visualization layer

## Key Features
- 100+ render API functions: summarize, derivative, movingAverage, scale, alias
- Wildcard and glob patterns in metric paths for flexible querying
- Automatic downsampling: high-resolution data rolls up to coarser intervals over time
- Tags support (since Graphite 1.1): key=value metadata on metric series
- StatsD integration: aggregate application-level counters, timers, and gauges

## Comparison with Similar Tools
- **Prometheus** — pull-based with PromQL; Graphite is push-based with its own function API
- **InfluxDB** — SQL-like query language (Flux/InfluxQL); Graphite uses a function-chain API
- **VictoriaMetrics** — Prometheus-compatible, higher performance; Graphite has a longer ecosystem history
- **TimescaleDB** — SQL on time-series; Graphite is purpose-built for metrics rendering

## FAQ
**Q: Is Graphite still actively maintained?**
A: Yes. The graphite-project organization on GitHub continues to release updates for Carbon, Whisper, and Graphite-web.

**Q: How does Graphite handle high cardinality?**
A: Each unique metric path creates a Whisper file. Very high cardinality (millions of metrics) requires SSD storage and careful carbon-relay sharding.

**Q: Can I use Grafana with Graphite?**
A: Yes. Grafana has a built-in Graphite data source that supports the full render API and function set.

**Q: What is the difference between Graphite and StatsD?**
A: StatsD aggregates application metrics (counters, timers) and flushes summaries to Graphite for storage and visualization. They are complementary.

## Sources
- https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web
- https://graphite.readthedocs.io/

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Source: https://tokrepo.com/en/workflows/6cfc8a1c-3f31-11f1-9bc6-00163e2b0d79
Author: AI Open Source