ChefInfluxDB handler

A Chef handler to update InfluxDB with data from the most recent Chef run. By default, it will report on:

• Run status (success/fail)
• Number of updated resources
• Elapsed time
• Time the Chef run approximately ended

You can also ship arbitrary data into InfluxDB using the data argument. Be warned, however, that this is somewhat sensitive to timing, as all data must be finalized before being passed into the handler. In otherwords, if you pass in an attribute and then change its value after declaring the handler, you will see the previous/initial value.

At least the :database and :series arguments are required. The handler otherwise assumes an InfluxDB server on localhost:8086, with credentials of root:root (defaults for InfluxDB).

Prerequisites

The influxdb Rubygem as well as an InfluxDB server setup somewhere. Install the gem using the following:

chef_gem 'influxdb' do
  action :nothing
end.run_action(:install)

You also need to make sure that the user who you want to write the data to InfluxDB has been created for that database (by default, that user is root)

Usage

Either just pull the handler file into the files/ directory of one of your cookbooks, or download as a Rubygem and source it that way.

# Option 1
cookbook_file "#{node[:chef_handler][:handler_path]}/chef-handler-influxdb.rb" do
  source 'chef-handler-influxdb.rb'
  mode 00600
end

chef_handler 'ChefInfluxDB' do
  source "#{node[:chef_handler][:handler_path]}/chef-handler-influxdb.rb"
  arguments [
    :database => 'database',
    :series => 'my_series',
    :data => node[:cookbook][:attribute].to_hash,
  ]
  action :enable
end

# Option 2
chef_gem 'chef-handler-influxdb' do
  action :install
end

chef_handler 'ChefInfluxDB' do
  source ::File.join(Gem::Specification.find_by_name('chef-handler-influxdb').lib_dirs_glob,
                     'chef-handler-influxdb.rb')
  arguments [
    :database => 'database',
    :series => 'my_series',
    :data => node[:cookbook][:attribute].to_hash,
  ]
  action :enable
end

Arguments

• database - The database to connect to (required)
• series - The timeseries to write to (required)
• host - The host of the InfluxDB server (default: localhost)
• port - The port of the InfluxDB server (default: 8086)
• user - The user to connect as (default: root)
• pass - The password to authenticate with (default: root)
• data - Send arbitrary data to InfluxDB (default: {})

Questions?

Hop on ##simple on Freenode with any questions or concerns.

Author and License

Simple Finance <ops@simple.com>

Apache License, Version 2.0