InfluxDB inch tool

Use the InfluxDB inch tool to simulate streaming data to InfluxDB and measure your performance (for example, the impact of cardinality on write throughput). To do this, complete the following tasks:

Install InfluxDB inch

  1. To install inch, run the following command in your terminal:

    $ go get
  2. Verify inch is successfully installed in your GOPATH/bin (default on Unix $HOME/go/bin).

Use InfluxDB inch

  1. Log into the InfluxDB instance you want to test (for InfluxDB Enterprise, log into the data node(s) to test).
  2. Run inch, specifying options (metrics) to test (see Options table below). For example, your syntax may look like this:

    inch -v -c 8 -b 10000 -t 2,5000,1 -p 100000 -consistency any

    This example starts generating a workload with:

    • 8 concurrent (-c) write streams
    • 10000 points per batch (-b)
    • tag cardinality (-t) of 10000 unique series (2x5000x1)
    • 10000 points (-p) per series
    • any write -consistency

    Note: By default, inch writes generated test results to a database named stress. To change the name of the inch database, include the -db string option, for example, inch -db test.

  3. To view the last 50 inch results, run the following query against the inch database:

     > select * from stress limit 50


inch options listed in alphabetical order.

Option Description Example
-b int batch size (default 5000; recommend between 5000-10000 points) -b 10000
-c int number of streams writing concurrently (default 1) -c 8
-consistency string write consistency (default “any”); values supported by the Influxdb API include “all”, “quorum”, or “one”. -consistency any
-db string name of the database to write to (default “stress”) -db stress
-delay duration delay between writes (in seconds s, minutes m, or hours h) -delay 1s
-dry dry run (maximum write performance perf possible on the specified database) -dry
-f int total unique field key-value pairs per point (default 1) -f 1
-host string host (default http://localhost:8086”) -host http://localhost:8086
-m int the number of measurements (default 1) -m 1
-max-errors int the number of InfluxDB errors that can occur before terminating the inch command -max-errors 5
-p int points per series (default 100) -p 100
-report-host string host to send metrics to report-host http://localhost:8086
-report-tags string comma-separated k=v (key-value?) tags to report alongside metrics -report-tags cpu=cpu1
-shard-duration string shard duration (default 7d) -shard-duration 7d
-t [string]** comma-separated integers that represent tags. -t [100,20,4]
-target-latency duration if specified, attempt to adapt write delay to meet target.
-time duration time span to spread writes over. -time 1h
-v verbose; prints out details as you’re running the test. -v

** -t [string] each integer represents a tag key and the number of tag values to generate for the key (default [10,10,10]). Multiply each integer to calculate the tag cardinality. For example, -t [100,20,4] has a tag cardinality of 8000 unique series.


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