This post will walk through the steps to instrument a sample nodeJS/Express application, collecting our metrics with Telegraf, and storing them with InfluxDB. A subsequent post will cover the exploration of our data and building out a dashboard with Chronograf.

Why We Instrument

One thing I learned very quickly when getting into the application development scene is that applications in a development environment always seem to be all fine and dandy, but applications in production like to have problems. When your application is available to the whole wide world, you can be sure things will go wrong at times. Instrumenting your application affords you concrete evidence of the health of your application, allowing you to make smarter decisions for its progress over time and effectively handle issues that arise in a much more efficient manner.

Source: DZone