Knowledgebase

Introduction

Graphite is a highly scalable real-time graphing system that can be used to gather various system information and display it in an intuitive web interface. Graphite is also free and open-source software.

This tutorial will cover the process of installing Graphite on a CentOS 7 Server instance.

Prerequisites

• A CentOS 7 instance.
• A sudo user.

Step 1: Install Required Packages

The Graphite packages are not available in the CentOS default yum repository. Install the EPEL repository.

sudo yum install -y http://epel.mirror.constant.com/7/x86_64/Packages/e/epel-release-7-12.noarch.rpm

Next, install the requires packages for Graphite as follows:

sudo yum install -y graphite-web python-carbon

Step 2: Configure Graphite

Next, we will need to modify storage schema file. The values in this file will instruct Carbon on how long to store values.

sudo nano /opt/graphite/conf/storage-schemas.conf 

Add the following lines:

 [default]
 pattern = .*
 retentions = 12s:4h, 2m:3d, 5m:8d, 13m:32d, 1h:1y

Save the file and start Carbon using the following command:

sudo systemctl enable carbon-cache
    sudo systemctl start carbon-cache 

Next, change the timezone and SECRET_KEY values in /etc/graphite-web/local_settings.py.

Once you are done, run the database setup script using following command:

PYTHONPATH=/usr/share/graphite/webapp django-admin syncdb --settings=graphite.settings

Step 4: Configure Apache for Graphite

First, remove the default index page from apache:

  echo > /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf

Next, edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/graphite-web.conf and replace everything in the 'Directory "/usr/share/graphite/"' block with:

    Require all granted
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all

Assign the proper permissions to the Graphite directory:

sudo chown apache:apache /var/lib/graphite-web/graphite.db

And work around a bug related to building indexs with:

  touch /var/lib/graphite-web/index

Start Apache and enable auto-start:

sudo systemctl start httpd  
sudo systemctl enable httpd  

Access Graphite Web Interface

You may need to enable port 80 in firewalld:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

You can now access Graphite in your web browser by visiting your server’s IP address.