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Overview

This template provides a production‑ready Graphite instance as a Monk runnable. You can:
  • Run it directly to get a managed Graphite container with sensible defaults
  • Inherit it in your own runnable to seamlessly add time-series metrics storage and visualization to your stack
It exposes Graphite’s web UI on port 80, the Carbon plaintext protocol on port 2003 for metrics ingestion, and StatsD management interface on port 8126. The template uses an all-in-one container that includes Carbon (metric collection), Whisper (storage), and Graphite-Web (visualization).

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What this template manages

  • Graphite container (graphiteapp/graphite-statsd image, configurable tag)
  • Network services:
    • Web UI on port 80
    • Carbon plaintext protocol on port 2003
    • StatsD management on port 8126
  • Time-series data storage and visualization

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Quick start (run directly)

  1. Load templates
monk load MANIFEST
  1. Run Graphite with defaults
monk run graphite/db
  1. Customize port (optional)
Running directly uses the defaults defined in this template’s variables.
  • Preferred: inherit and customize variables as shown below.
  • Alternative: fork/clone and edit the variables in graphite.yml, then monk load MANIFEST and run.
Once started, access the web UI at http://localhost:80 (or the configured gui_port) and send metrics to port 2003.

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Configuration

Key variables you can customize in this template: 
variables:
  image: "1.1.10-4"       # container image tag
  gui_port: 80            # web UI host port
Inherit the Graphite runnable in your application to add metrics collection. Example: 
namespace: myapp
metrics:
  defines: runnable
  inherits: graphite/db
  variables:
    gui_port:
      value: 8080
api:
  defines: runnable
  containers:
    api:
      image: myorg/api
      environment:
        - GRAPHITE_HOST=<- connection-hostname("metrics-connection")
        - GRAPHITE_PORT=2003
  connections:
    metrics-connection:
      runnable: metrics
      service: plaintext-svc
Then run your app group: 
monk run myapp/api

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Ports and connectivity

  • Service: gui-svc on TCP port 80 (web UI, configurable via gui_port)
  • Service: plaintext-svc on TCP port 2003 (Carbon plaintext protocol for metrics ingestion)
  • Service: management-svc on TCP port 8126 (StatsD management interface)
  • From other runnables in the same process group, use connection-hostname("\<connection-name>") to resolve the Graphite host.

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Sending metrics to Graphite

You can send metrics using the plaintext protocol on port 2003: 
echo "test.metric 42 $(date +%s)" | nc localhost 2003
Or use one of the many Graphite client libraries available for various languages.

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Features

  • Time-series data storage with Whisper database
  • Real-time graphing and visualization
  • Multiple data retention policies
  • Carbon plaintext and pickle protocols
  • Built-in StatsD daemon
  • HTTP API for data queries
  • Dashboard creation and sharing
  • Graphite Query Language (GQL) for data manipulation
  • Combine with grafana/ for advanced visualization and dashboards
  • Integrate with telegraf/ for comprehensive metrics collection
  • Use with prometheus/ for additional monitoring capabilities

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Troubleshooting

  • If the web UI is not accessible, verify that the gui_port is not already in use and check firewall rules.
  • Ensure metrics are being sent to the correct port (2003 for plaintext protocol).
  • Check logs:
monk logs -l 500 -f graphite/db
  • To verify metrics are being received, check the web UI’s “Composer” view or query the API directly.