Installing Graphite

Docker

Try Graphite in Docker and have it running in seconds:

docker run -d \
 --name graphite \
 --restart=always \
 -p 80:80 \
 -p 2003-2004:2003-2004 \
 -p 2023-2024:2023-2024 \
 -p 8125:8125/udp \
 -p 8126:8126 \
 graphiteapp/graphite-statsd

Check docker repo for details.

This is portable, fast and easy to use. Or use instructions below for installation.

Dependencies

Graphite renders graphs using the Cairo graphics library. This adds dependencies on several graphics-related libraries not typically found on a server. If you’re installing from source you can use the check-dependencies.py script to see if the dependencies have been met or not.

Basic Graphite requirements:

  • a UNIX-like Operating System
  • Python 2.7 or greater (including experimental Python3 support)
  • cairocffi
  • Django 1.8 - 2.2 (for Python3 - 1.11 and newer), 1.11.19 or newer is recommended
  • django-tagging 0.4.6 (not django-taggit yet)
  • pytz
  • scandir (for Python older than 3.5)
  • fontconfig and at least one font package (a system package usually)
  • A WSGI server and web server. Popular choices are:

Additionally, the Graphite webapp and Carbon require the Whisper database library which is part of the Graphite project.

There are also several other dependencies required for additional features:

See also

On some systems it is necessary to install fonts for Cairo to use. If the webapp is running but all graphs return as broken images, this may be why.

Fulfilling Dependencies

Most current Linux distributions have all of the requirements available in the base packages. RHEL based distributions may require the EPEL repository for requirements. Python module dependencies can be install with pip rather than system packages if desired or if using a Python version that differs from the system default. Some modules (such as Cairo) may require library development headers to be available.

Default Installation Layout

Graphite defaults to an installation layout that puts the entire install in its own directory: /opt/graphite

Whisper

Whisper is installed Python’s system-wide site-packages directory with Whisper’s utilities installed in the bin dir of the system’s default prefix (generally /usr/bin/).

Carbon and Graphite-web

Carbon and Graphite-web are installed in /opt/graphite/ with the following layout:

  • bin/

  • conf/

  • lib/

    Carbon PYTHONPATH

  • storage/

    • log

      Log directory for Carbon and Graphite-web

    • rrd

      Location for RRD files to be read

    • whisper

      Location for Whisper data files to be stored and read

    • ceres

      Location for Ceres data files to be stored and read

  • webapp/

    Graphite-web PYTHONPATH

    • graphite/

      Location of local_settings.py

    • content/

      Graphite-web static content directory

Help! It didn’t work!

If you run into any issues with Graphite, please to post a question to our Questions forum on Launchpad or join us on IRC in #graphite on FreeNode.

Post-Install Tasks

Configuring Carbon
Once you’ve installed everything you will need to create some basic configuration. Initially none of the config files are created by the installer but example files are provided. Simply copy the .example files and customize.
Administering Carbon
Once Carbon is configured, you need to start it up.
Feeding In Your Data
Once it’s up and running, you need to feed it some data.
Configuring The Webapp
With data getting into carbon, you probably want to look at graphs of it. So now we turn our attention to the webapp.
Administering The Webapp
Once its configured you’ll need to get it running.
Using the Composer
Now that the webapp is running, you probably want to learn how to use it.

Windows Users

Unfortunately, native Graphite on Windows is completely unsupported, but you can run Graphite on Windows in Docker or the Installing via Synthesize article will help you set up a Vagrant VM that will run Graphite. In order to leverage this, you will need to install Vagrant.