What should users of InfluxDB 0.8 or 0.9 consider before upgrading to InfluxDB 0.10+? Touches on schema, continuous queries, data export/import, and gives example workflows.

1. Upgrading to InfluxDB 0.10:
Things to Consider
Sean Beckett
Director of Support & Professional Services

2. • New Storage Engine, TSM
• New Continuous Query syntax
• New Clustering
What's New?
0.8 —> 0.10
• New Schema
• New API and endpoints
• No MERGEs
• Shard Spaces become Retention Policies
• Updated Query syntax
• Administrative queries replace Admin UI

3. • Clustering in InfluxDB 0.10 is
not backwards compatible
• Continuous Query syntax and
configuration are different
Brief Mentions
https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/blob/master/importer/README.md
https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v0.9/concepts/08_vs_09/
https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v0.10/concepts/09_vs_010/

4. TSM: Time Structured Merge-Tree
• Purpose-built
• Compression by design
• No "empty" space
• Read only what is needed

5. TSM: Best Practices - measurements
• Measurements are logical containers for series
• Measurements contain series with related field sets
• No JOINs or MERGEs across measurements

6. TSM: Best Practices - tags
• Tags are indexed
• Tags in the WHERE clause are performant
• GROUP BY operates on tags
• Tag Cardinality matters!

7. TSM: Best Practices - fields
• Fields are not indexed
• Fields in the WHERE clause are much less performant
• Functions operate only on fields
• Field cardinality is irrelevant*
• Multiple fields per point is more performant

8. TSM: Best Practices - timestamps
• Timestamp precision is controlled at write time
• Lower precision uses less disk, faster writes and reads

9. Migration Tools
InfluxDB 0.8.9 - Export (endpoint)
InfluxDB 0.9+ - Import via CLI (./influx)
InfluxDB 0.10+ - TSM conversion tool (./influx_tsm)

10. Example Migration #1
Conditions:
• Downtime is irrelevant
• Converting from 0.9
• Not clustered

11. Example Migration #1
1. Stop traffic to InfluxDB 0.9
2. Restart the process and wait for the WAL to flush
3. Stop InfluxDB
4. Install 0.10.1 on top of 0.9
5. Run ./influx_tsm to convert shards
influx_tsm -parallel /var/lib/influxdb/data
6. Once complete, launch InfluxDB 0.10.1
7. Resume traffic to InfluxDB

12. Example Migration #2
Conditions:
• Downtime is unacceptable
• Converting from 0.9
• Not clustered

13. Example Migration #2
1. Install 0.10.1 on top of 0.9 and restart
2. Copy "cold" B1/BZ1 shards to /tmp
3. Run ./influx_tsm to convert cold shards
influx_tsm -backup /tmp/influxdb_backup /tmp/data
4. Remove cold B1/BZ1 shards and replace with
converted TSM shards
5. Wait until current "hot" shards become "cold", repeat
steps 2-4 on newly cold shards

14. Example Migration #3
Conditions:
• Downtime is acceptable
• Converting from 0.8
• Not clustered

15. Example Migration #3
1. Stop traffic to InfluxDB 0.8.x
2. Install InfluxDB 0.8.9 and restart
3. Run the Export tool
curl -o export.gz --compressed http://localhost:8086/
export/<db>/<shard_space>
4. Launch InfluxDB 0.10.1 on a new server
5. Use the CLI to import the exported data
influx -import -path=export.gz -compressed > failures
6. Update clients and dashboards for new API, etc.
7. Resume traffic to InfluxDB 0.10.1

16. The Hard Stuff
• Fixing failed points in 0.8 import
• Migrating 0.8 queries where a column is treated as
both a tag and a field
• Controlling series cardinality
• Updating the clients to avoid downtime
• Updating the dashboards to avoid downtime
• Controlling for performance changes

17. Questions
docs.influxdata.com
influxdb@googlegroups.com
support@influxdb.com