Trying to get pfsense to send data to Grafana Cloud with Telegraf Plugin

Grafana Graphite
1

I am totally new to this and maybe need to be using multiple other services to get the data to grafana, please let me know if there is anything I need to clarify or add. I dont have an influxdb instance so that is why I am trying to use telegraf and graphite.

  • What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?
    Grafana Cloud

  • What are you trying to achieve?
    Trying to get the data into Grafana using the PFsense telegraf plugin with the Graphite Output in the selection box.

  • How are you trying to achieve it?
    I am entering the information from the default graphite datasource that was created for the account in the pfsense telegraf package config page, using the api key I generated as an editor role.

  • What happened?
    Nothing when I try to explore my data nothing is available.

  • What did you expect to happen?
    I was expecting to see my data in the data explorer on grafana cloud.

  • Can you copy/paste the configuration(s) that you are having problems with?
    [global_tags]
    user = “123456”

[[outputs.influxdb]]
urls = “https://graphite-us-central2.grafana.net/graphite/metrics”
skip_database_creation = true
password = “a generated api key”

  • Did you receive any errors in the Grafana UI or in related logs? If so, please tell us exactly what they were.
    The logs on pfsense are empty and Grafana UI is showing nothing.

  • Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?
    Yes, except I am not sure where the carbon relay config is supposed to go, this is found by going to your grafana cloud account stack and clicking details on graphite. Grafana Cloud

2

Hi @dweaver and welcome to the Grafana forum.

It sounds like you already have a good start. Having said that, if you are using Grafana Cloud, you have the option to use either Prometheus or Graphite. My suggestion would be use Prometheus because it’s more widely used and your future Q&A may be easier to find here and around the 'Net.

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Here are the steps to send data from pfSense to Prometheus hosted in Grafana Cloud using the Telegraf plugin:

  1. Install Telegraf package on pfSense (sounds like you have done this successfully already)
  2. Configure Telegraf. After installation, go to “Services” > “Telegraf” to configure the Telegraf service. Make sure to enable the service by checking “Enable Telegraf Service”. In the “Telegraf Configuration” field, you will need to add input and output configuration blocks.
  3. Configure Telegraf to send data to Prometheus hosted in Grafana Cloud by following these instructions.
3

Thank you very much for your help! I am seeing if my metrics are being pushed now, quick question that I am not sure about. Do I need to create a new prometheus data source or can I use the default cloud one? I do not really see any specifics on that.

4

You should be able to use the default Prometheus data source that is part of Grafana Cloud.