Best Time Series Databases for Apache Cassandra

InfluxDB is a purpose-built data platform designed to handle all time series data, from users, sensors, applications and infrastructure — seamlessly collecting, storing, visualizing, and turning insight into action. With a library of more than 250 open source Telegraf plugins, importing and monitoring data from any system is easy. InfluxDB empowers developers to build transformative IoT, monitoring and analytics services and applications. InfluxDB’s flexible architecture fits any implementation — whether in the cloud, at the edge or on-premises — and its versatility, accessibility and supporting tools (client libraries, APIs, etc.) make it easy for developers at any level to quickly build applications and services with time series data. Optimized for developer efficiency and productivity, the InfluxDB platform gives builders time to focus on the features and functionalities that give their internal projects value and their applications a competitive edge. To get started, InfluxData offers free training through InfluxDB University.

Telegraf is an open-source server agent that helps you collect metrics from your sensors, stacks, and systems. Telegraf is a plugin-driven agent that collects and sends metrics and events from systems, databases, and IoT sensors. Telegraf is written in Go. It compiles to a single binary and has no external dependencies. It also requires very little memory. Telegraf can gather metrics from a wide variety of inputs and then write them into a wide range of outputs. It can be easily extended by being plugin-driven for both the collection and output data. It is written in Go and can be run on any system without external dependencies. It is easy to collect metrics from your endpoints with the 300+ plugins that have been created by data experts in the community.

Instaclustr, the Open Source-as a Service company, delivers reliability at scale. We provide database, search, messaging, and analytics in an automated, trusted, and proven managed environment. We help companies focus their internal development and operational resources on creating cutting-edge customer-facing applications. Instaclustr is a cloud provider that works with AWS, Heroku Azure, IBM Cloud Platform, Azure, IBM Cloud and Google Cloud Platform. The company is certified by SOC 2 and offers 24/7 customer support.

Blueflood is an advanced distributed metric processing system designed for high throughput and low latency, operating as a multi-tenant solution that supports Rackspace Metrics. It is actively utilized by both the Rackspace Monitoring team and the Rackspace public cloud team to effectively manage and store metrics produced by their infrastructure. Beyond its application within Rackspace, Blueflood also sees extensive use in large-scale deployments documented in community resources. The data collected through Blueflood is versatile, allowing users to create dashboards, generate reports, visualize data through graphs, or engage in any activities that involve analyzing time-series data. With a primary emphasis on near-real-time processing, data can be queried just milliseconds after it is ingested, ensuring timely access to information. Users send their metrics to the ingestion service and retrieve them from the Query service, while the system efficiently handles background rollups through offline batch processing, thus facilitating quick responses for queries covering extended time frames. This architecture not only enhances performance but also ensures that users can rely on rapid access to their critical metrics for effective decision-making.

Hawkular Metrics is a robust, asynchronous, multi-tenant engine designed for long-term metrics storage, utilizing Cassandra for its data management and REST as its main interface. This segment highlights some of the essential characteristics of Hawkular Metrics, while subsequent sections will delve deeper into these features as well as additional functionalities. One of the standout aspects of Hawkular Metrics is its impressive scalability; its architecture allows for operation on a single instance with just one Cassandra node, or it can be expanded to encompass multiple nodes to accommodate growing demands. Moreover, the server is designed with a stateless architecture, facilitating easy scaling. Illustrated in the accompanying diagram are various deployment configurations enabled by the scalable design of Hawkular Metrics. The upper left corner depicts the most straightforward setup involving a lone Cassandra node connected to a single Hawkular Metrics node, while the lower right corner demonstrates a scenario where multiple Hawkular Metrics nodes can operate in conjunction with fewer Cassandra nodes, showcasing flexibility in deployment. Overall, this system is engineered to meet the evolving requirements of users efficiently.

Heroic is an open-source monitoring solution initially developed at Spotify to tackle challenges related to the large-scale collection and near real-time analysis of metrics. It comprises a limited number of specialized components that each serve distinct purposes. The system offers indefinite data retention, contingent upon adequate hardware investment, alongside federation capabilities that enable multiple Heroic clusters to connect and present a unified interface. A key component, Consumers, is tasked with the consumption of metrics, illustrating the system's design for efficiency. During the development of Heroic, it became evident that managing hundreds of millions of time series without sufficient context poses significant challenges. Additionally, the federation support facilitates the handling of requests across various independent Heroic clusters, allowing them to serve clients via a single global interface. This feature not only streamlines operations but also minimizes geographical traffic, as it allows individual clusters to function independently within their designated zones. Such capabilities ensure that Heroic remains a robust choice for organizations needing effective monitoring solutions.

KairosDB allows data ingestion through various protocols including Telnet, Rest, and Graphite, in addition to supporting plugins for further flexibility. It utilizes Cassandra, a well-regarded NoSQL database, to manage time series data effectively. The database schema is organized into three column families, facilitating efficient data storage. The API offers a range of functionalities, such as listing existing metric names, retrieving tag names and their corresponding values, storing metric data points, and querying these points for analysis. Upon a standard installation, users can access a query page that enables them to extract data from the database easily. This tool is primarily tailored for development applications. Aggregators within the system can perform operations on data points, allowing for down sampling and analysis. A set of standard functions, including min, max, sum, count, and mean, among others, are readily available for users to utilize. Additionally, the KairosDB server supports import and export functionalities via the command line interface. Internal metrics related to the database not only provide insights into the stored data but also allow for monitoring the performance of the server itself, ensuring optimal operation and efficiency. This comprehensive approach makes KairosDB a powerful solution for managing time series data.

Introducing a versatile, open-source multi-cloud platform for contemporary data applications, built on Apache Cassandra™. Achieve global-scale performance with guaranteed 100% uptime while avoiding vendor lock-in. You have the flexibility to deploy on multi-cloud environments, on-premises infrastructures, or use Kubernetes. The platform is designed to be elastic and offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model to enhance total cost of ownership. Accelerate your development process with Stargate APIs, which support NoSQL, real-time interactions, reactive programming, as well as JSON, REST, and GraphQL formats. Bypass the difficulties associated with managing numerous open-source projects and APIs that lack scalability. This solution is perfect for various sectors including e-commerce, mobile applications, AI/ML, IoT, microservices, social networking, gaming, and other highly interactive applications that require dynamic scaling based on demand. Start your journey of creating modern data applications with Astra, a database-as-a-service powered by Apache Cassandra™. Leverage REST, GraphQL, and JSON alongside your preferred full-stack framework. This platform ensures that your richly interactive applications are not only elastic but also ready to gain traction from the very first day, all while offering a cost-effective Apache Cassandra DBaaS that scales seamlessly and affordably as your needs evolve. With this innovative approach, developers can focus on building rather than managing infrastructure.