telegraf/docs/DATA_FORMATS_OUTPUT.md

Telegraf Output Data Formats

Telegraf metrics, like InfluxDB points, are a combination of four basic parts:

1. Measurement Name
2. Tags
3. Fields
4. Timestamp

In InfluxDB line protocol, these 4 parts are easily defined in textual form:

measurement_name[,tag1=val1,...]  field1=val1[,field2=val2,...]  [timestamp]

For Telegraf outputs that write textual data (such as kafka, mqtt, and file), InfluxDB line protocol was originally the only available output format. But now we are normalizing telegraf metric "serializers" into a plugin-like interface across all output plugins that can support it. You will be able to identify a plugin that supports different data formats by the presence of a data_format config option, for example, in the file output plugin:

[[outputs.file]]
  ## Files to write to, "stdout" is a specially handled file.
  files = ["stdout"]

  ## Data format to output. This can be "influx" or "graphite"
  ## Each data format has it's own unique set of configuration options, read
  ## more about them here:
  ## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_OUTPUT.md
  data_format = "influx"

  ## Additional configuration options go here

Each data_format has an additional set of configuration options available, which I'll go over below.

Influx:

There are no additional configuration options for InfluxDB line-protocol. The metrics are serialized directly into InfluxDB line-protocol.

Influx Configuration:

[[outputs.file]]
  ## Files to write to, "stdout" is a specially handled file.
  files = ["stdout", "/tmp/metrics.out"]

  ## Data format to output. This can be "influx" or "graphite"
  ## Each data format has it's own unique set of configuration options, read
  ## more about them here:
  ## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_OUTPUT.md
  data_format = "influx"

Graphite:

The Graphite data format translates Telegraf metrics into dot buckets. The format is:

[prefix].[host tag].[all tags (alphabetical)].[measurement name].[field name] value timestamp

Which means the following influx metric -> graphite conversion would happen:

cpu,cpu=cpu-total,dc=us-east-1,host=tars usage_idle=98.09,usage_user=0.89 1455320660004257758
=>
tars.cpu-total.us-east-1.cpu.usage_user 0.89 1455320690
tars.cpu-total.us-east-1.cpu.usage_idle 98.09 1455320690

prefix is a configuration option when using the graphite output data format.

Graphite Configuration:

[[outputs.file]]
  ## Files to write to, "stdout" is a specially handled file.
  files = ["stdout", "/tmp/metrics.out"]

  ## Data format to output. This can be "influx" or "graphite"
  ## Each data format has it's own unique set of configuration options, read
  ## more about them here:
  ## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_OUTPUT.md
  data_format = "influx"

  prefix = "telegraf"