Everybody Loves Graphite

2015-11-05 23:15:04 by jdixon

There was an article published recently - not here, and not to be linked or referenced here directly - proposing that "nobody loves Graphite" anymore. A linkbait title if I've ever heard one. Many folks linked this article to me, almost certainly expecting me to respond in an uproar. And yet, what I find myself really disappointed over is the obvious misrepresentation of fact (as it pertains to Graphite's technical limits) and an almost malicious disregard for the enormous community that uses it and contributes back to its ongoing development.

It's almost as if they're trying to sell you something. Nah, that couldn't be it.

I readily concede that Graphite was not designed for the transient nature of the sort of bleeding-edge containerized, clustering systems that are becoming popular in conference talks and Hacker News (if not in actual use in production, but we'll forgive them this tiny oversight). Admittedly, it takes an expertly skilled engineer to craft a background job for the purpose of removing old cruft. It's not every SysAdmin that knows how to cron, after all.

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Graphite 0.9.14 - the Highlights

2015-11-01 11:11:12 by jdixon

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, we're perilously close to shipping the next Graphite release. Although we typically avoid large, sweeping changes in the stable branch, the long development cycle leading up to this particular release means we have a number of big new features and performance improvements to announce.

Rather than assume everyone will read and understand the significance of all the changes in the 0.9.14 Release Notes, I felt it would be a good idea to touch on some of them here. This collection represents a small handful of highlights among the numerous changes from this release. The sustained level of interest and contributions from the community continue to astound me. I can't thank everyone enough for their continued support of the Graphite project.

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Graphite 0.9.14 - the Phoenix Release

2015-10-27 23:55:39 by jdixon

If you're like most Graphite users, you're probably wondering if and when there will ever be another release for the project. There hasn't been much public activity over the last couple of years, at least outside of GitHub. A lack of corporate sponsorship, in terms of dedicated developer and maintainer hours, means that the project receives attention as volunteers' schedules permit. Speaking solely for myself, I prioritize Graphite development somewhere behind family, work, the Monitorama conference, writing the Graphite book, and "other recreational activities".

Despite the lack of a regular release cycle, Graphite is as popular as ever. The Grafana project is going gangbusters, with Graphite as its priority time-series backend. A variety of new open source projects have cropped up offering high-performance alternatives to the original specification implementations (graphite-web and carbon). New software projects, both commercial and open source, continue to target Graphite API compatibility because of its ubiquity and ease of use. Heck, even those other competing time-series engines are forced to support Graphite-friendly interfaces. In some cases they even outperform their own proprietary ingress methods.

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On Writing the Graphite Book

2015-02-22 23:56:56 by jdixon

I'm writing a book. This may come as a surprise given the lack of content on this blog over the last... entire year of 2014. Nevertheless, I'm pleased to report that the rumors are true and I am in fact writing a book about Graphite.

Three different editors at O'Reilly contacted me over the course of a few years about the possibility of authoring a volume about my favorite Open Source time-series rendering engine. I had significant concerns about the availability of free time I'd have to spend on this project, so I had to turn them down the first couple times. Last year, something finally clicked and I relented. And so, Monitoring with Graphite became a thing.

We've decided to release it as a work in progress, with the Early Release going on sale in December 2014 and an expected official release around June 2015. According to the outline we're almost at the halfway point of the book, so I think it's reasonable to say we're still on schedule.

If you've enjoyed my blog posts, I really think you'll love the book. I've included a healthy discussion around monitoring concepts and the "composable monitoring system", a deep dive into the Graphite components, fully fleshed-out installation processes and tips of the trade, and a helluva lot more. I aim to be as comprehensive as possible while still managing to keep it an entertaining read. Frankly, this is probably the only subject matter that I'll know well enough to write a book about, so I'm not about to let myself screw it up.

I encourage you to grab the Early Release Ebook and provide feedback. Your comments and suggestions (or questions) will continue to fuel the content for the rest of the book. And if you make it out to Monitorama this summer, I'll be happy to sign your tablet or laptop.