Graphite

Graphite, developed by the Graphite Project, is an enterprise-ready monitoring tool designed to track the performance of websites, applications, business services, and networked servers. According to the vendor, it enables users to store, retrieve, share, and visualize time-series data. Graphite is aimed at companies of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises, and is utilized by professionals and industries such as IT Operations, DevOps, Software Development, Network Engineering, and E-commerce.

Key Features

Simple Data Storage: According to the vendor, Graphite provides a straightforward path for getting measurements into a time-series database, allowing users to store numeric time-series data. Metrics can be fed into Graphite using a simple plaintext format or other supported transport mechanisms.

Graph Rendering: Graphite has the capability to render graphs of time-series data on demand. The user interface allows users to construct and customize graphs using a variety of output styles and formats. These graphs can be easily embedded in other web pages or dashboards, as stated by the vendor.

Enterprise-Ready Monitoring: The vendor claims that Graphite is an enterprise-ready monitoring tool that can run on inexpensive hardware or cloud infrastructure. It is suitable for tracking the performance of websites, applications, business services, and networked servers. Large companies have reportedly deployed Graphite in production to monitor their e-commerce services and plan for growth.

High-Performance Service: Graphite consists of three software components: carbon, whisper, and graphite-web. Carbon, as described by the vendor, is a high-performance service that listens for time-series data, while whisper is a simple database library used for storing time-series data. Graphite-web serves as the user interface and API for rendering graphs and dashboards.

Extensive Integrations: The vendor states that Graphite has one of the largest ecosystems of data integrations and third-party tools. It seamlessly works with various tools and technologies, including StatsD, Collectd, and many others. This allows users to easily integrate Graphite into their existing monitoring and data collection workflows.

Flexible Output Formats: According to the vendor, Graphite's web platform offers a variety of output styles and formats, including raw images, CSV, XML, and JSON. This flexibility allows users to easily embed custom graphs in other web pages or dashboards. The output formats can be customized to suit different visualization and reporting needs.