NATS and Thanos Integration
Powerful performance with an easy integration, powered by Telegraf, the open source data connector built by InfluxData.
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Powerful Performance, Limitless Scale
Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-velocity data. Any data is more valuable when you think of it as time series data. with InfluxDB, the #1 time series platform built to scale with Telegraf.
See Ways to Get Started
Input and output integration overview
The NATS Consumer Input Plugin enables real-time data consumption from NATS messaging subjects, integrating seamlessly into the Telegraf data pipeline for monitoring and metrics gathering.
This plugin sends metrics from Telegraf to Thanos using the Prometheus remote write protocol over HTTP, allowing efficient and scalable ingestion into Thanos Receive components.
Integration details
NATS
The NATS Consumer Plugin allows Telegraf to read metrics from specified NATS subjects and create metrics based on supported input data formats. Utilizing a Queue Group allows multiple instances of Telegraf to read from a NATS cluster in parallel, enhancing throughput and reliability. This plugin also supports various authentication methods, including username/password, NATS credentials files, and nkey seed files, ensuring secure communication with the NATS servers. It is particularly useful in environments where data persistence and message reliability are critical, thanks to features such as JetStream that facilitate the consumption of historical messages. Additionally, the ability to configure various operational parameters makes this plugin suitable for high-throughput scenarios while maintaining performance integrity.
Thanos
Telegraf’s HTTP plugin can send metrics directly to Thanos via its Remote Write-compatible Receive component. By setting the data format to prometheusremotewrite
, Telegraf can serialize metrics into the same protobuf-based format used by native Prometheus clients. This setup enables high-throughput, low-latency metric ingestion into Thanos, facilitating centralized observability at scale. It is particularly useful in hybrid environments where Telegraf is collecting metrics from systems outside Prometheus’ native reach, such as SNMP devices, Windows hosts, or custom apps, and streams them directly to Thanos for long-term storage and global querying.
Configuration
NATS
[[inputs.nats_consumer]]
## urls of NATS servers
servers = ["nats://localhost:4222"]
## subject(s) to consume
## If you use jetstream you need to set the subjects
## in jetstream_subjects
subjects = ["telegraf"]
## jetstream subjects
## jetstream is a streaming technology inside of nats.
## With jetstream the nats-server persists messages and
## a consumer can consume historical messages. This is
## useful when telegraf needs to restart it don't miss a
## message. You need to configure the nats-server.
## https://docs.nats.io/nats-concepts/jetstream.
jetstream_subjects = ["js_telegraf"]
## name a queue group
queue_group = "telegraf_consumers"
## Optional authentication with username and password credentials
# username = ""
# password = ""
## Optional authentication with NATS credentials file (NATS 2.0)
# credentials = "/etc/telegraf/nats.creds"
## Optional authentication with nkey seed file (NATS 2.0)
# nkey_seed = "/etc/telegraf/seed.txt"
## Use Transport Layer Security
# secure = false
## Optional TLS Config
# tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
# tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
# tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
# insecure_skip_verify = false
## Sets the limits for pending msgs and bytes for each subscription
## These shouldn't need to be adjusted except in very high throughput scenarios
# pending_message_limit = 65536
# pending_bytes_limit = 67108864
## Max undelivered messages
## This plugin uses tracking metrics, which ensure messages are read to
## outputs before acknowledging them to the original broker to ensure data
## is not lost. This option sets the maximum messages to read from the
## broker that have not been written by an output.
##
## This value needs to be picked with awareness of the agent's
## metric_batch_size value as well. Setting max undelivered messages too high
## can result in a constant stream of data batches to the output. While
## setting it too low may never flush the broker's messages.
# max_undelivered_messages = 1000
## Data format to consume.
## Each data format has its own unique set of configuration options, read
## more about them here:
## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_INPUT.md
data_format = "influx"
Thanos
[[outputs.http]]
## Thanos Receive endpoint for remote write
url = "http://thanos-receive.example.com/api/v1/receive"
## HTTP method
method = "POST"
## Data format set to Prometheus remote write
data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"
## Optional headers (authorization, etc.)
# [outputs.http.headers]
# Authorization = "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"
## Optional TLS configuration
# tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
# tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
# tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"
# insecure_skip_verify = false
## Request timeout
timeout = "10s"
Input and output integration examples
NATS
-
Real-Time Analytics Dashboard: Utilize the NATS plugin to gather metrics from various NATS subjects in real time and feed them into a centralized analytics dashboard. This setup allows for immediate visibility into live application performance, enabling teams to react swiftly to operational issues or performance degradation.
-
Distributed System Monitoring: Deploy multiple instances of Telegraf configured with the NATS plugin across a distributed architecture. This approach allows teams to aggregate metrics from various microservices efficiently, providing a holistic view of system health and performance while ensuring no messages are dropped during transmission.
-
Historical Message Recovery: Leverage the capabilities of NATS JetStream along with this plugin to recover and process historical messages after Telegraf has been restarted. This feature is particularly beneficial for applications that require high reliability, ensuring that no critical metrics are lost even in case of service disruptions.
-
Dynamic Load Balancing: Implement a dynamic load balancing scenario where Telegraf instances consume messages from a NATS cluster based on load. Adjust the queue group settings to control the number of active consumers, allowing for better resource utilization and performance scaling as demand fluctuations occur.
Thanos
-
Agentless Cloud Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across cloud VMs to collect system and application metrics, then stream them directly into Thanos using Remote Write. This provides centralized observability without requiring Prometheus nodes at each location.
-
Scalable Windows Host Monitoring: Use Telegraf on Windows machines to collect OS-level metrics and send them via Remote Write to Thanos Receive. This enables observability across heterogeneous environments with native Prometheus support only on Linux.
-
Cross-Region Metrics Federation: Telegraf agents in multiple geographic regions can push data to region-local Thanos Receivers using this plugin. From there, Thanos can deduplicate and query metrics globally, reducing latency and network egress costs.
-
Integrating Third-Party Data into Thanos: Collect metrics from custom telemetry sources such as REST APIs or proprietary logs using Telegraf inputs and forward them to Thanos via Remote Write. This brings non-native data into a Prometheus-compatible, long-term analytics pipeline.
Feedback
Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.
Powerful Performance, Limitless Scale
Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-velocity data. Any data is more valuable when you think of it as time series data. with InfluxDB, the #1 time series platform built to scale with Telegraf.
See Ways to Get Started
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