graphite: Send metrics to Graphite

The graphite() destination can send metrics to a Graphite server to store numeric time-series data. There are many ways to feed the Graphite template function with name value pairs. The AxoSyslog CSV and PatternDB parsers (for details, see Using pattern parsers) can parse log messages and generate name value pairs based on message content. The CSV parser (for details, see Parsing messages with comma-separated and similar values) can be used for logs that have a constant field based structure, like the Apache web server access logs. The [patterndb() parser] can parse information and can extract important fields from free form log messages, as long as patterns describing the log messages are available. Another way is to send JSON-based log messages (for details, see JSON parser) to AxoSyslog, like running a simple shell script collecting metrics and running it from cron regularly.

To see an example of how the graphite() destination is used to collect statistics coming from syslog-ng, see the blog post Collecting syslog-ng statistics to Graphite.

Declaration:

   graphite(payload());

Example: Using the graphite() driver

To use the graphite() destination, the only mandatory parameter is payload, which specifies the value pairs to send to graphite. In the following example any value pairs starting with “monitor." are forwarded to graphite.

   destination d_graphite { graphite(payload("--key monitor.*")); };