General

General

• What is Hosted Graphite?

  Hosted Graphite is a provider of metric collection, storage and visualisation services.

• Huh?

  Sorry. We provide ways for you to send us data about how your application and servers are running and we plot that data on graphs and dashboards for you. We give you the tools you need to send large amounts of data, and provide interesting ways for you to get accurate data back out, analyze it, and share it.

  When you have questions about any part of this process we respond quickly and give you useful advice.

• What is a Metric?

  A metric is a time-series collection of name-value data. This data is sent to us as it is sampled (or aggregated with other sampled data) and it becomes available in your account for later graphing.

  In human terms, this means that you send us a number at a certain time, and we make sure that that number gets collected correctly with all the other numbers that lots of other servers could be sending at the same time.

• What is Graphite?

  Graphite is a highly scalable, real-time graphing system. The metrics that you send us can be graphed using Graphite’s web interface or on Grafana Dashboards, available when you log into your Hosted Graphite account.

• Why should I use Hosted Graphite?

  Hosted Graphite lets you measure, analyze and visualize large amounts of data about your applications and back-end systems without any of the hassles of setting up your own server, or worrying about scaling, backups or maintenance. There’s lots of supported tools, addons and plugins to let you get exactly the type of data you want out, and plenty of simple ways to get data in. Get an instant overview of how your technology is performing.

• But I could just install the open-source version of Graphite?

  You could! Let’s say you take some time to figure out the docs and install it somewhere, then do some tests to get data in and make sure it’s giving you the right data back out. Let’s say it takes a few hours of pretty enjoyable tinkering, because I’m an optimist (your mileage may vary...).

  That’s the easy, fun part. Here’s the unfun part: 

     
  • At some point in the future, you’re going to have to drop some other important task because your monitoring setup stops working the way you want.
  • Maybe your company grows, and you need to send way more data than you originally thought and the server you picked can’t handle it. Now you need to reinstall somewhere, or multiple somewheres.
  • Maybe someone on your team isn’t getting the right answers out, and you need to help them debug it or create new dashboards.
  • Maybe your company releases the new badass version of your software, and even with your beefy new setup it swamps your monitoring. Now nobody know what’s happening in production and people are looking at you like you kicked their puppy.
  • Maybe now you can’t remember exactly what you were working on originally?
  • Maybe your boss is wondering why you’re spending all this time maintaining the graphs instead of writing that useful new feature the customers are waiting for?
  • Maybe you didn’t want to be the Graphite monkey, and all these problems need to just go away...

     

  That’s why we’re doing this - let us handle it for you.

• What if I want to use Prometheus?

  We also provide Prometheus monitoring as a service. If you would like some pointers on best practices and what would work best for your particular use case, get in touch.