User Guide

Advanced Topics

Using ntopng with InfluxDB

ntopng can be configured to work with InfluxDB to write and read timeseries data. To configure it, follow the following steps.

  1. Open ntopng from NetEye (Sidebar menu >> ntopng) and then, in ntopng click on the Settings >> Preferences option in the left menu bar.

  2. Now, go to timeseries preference option and configure these settings:

    • Timeseries Driver: InfluxDB 1.x

    • InfluxDB Url: http://<influxdb-domain>:8086

    • InfluxDB Database: <database-name> i.e. ntopng

  3. If you are using authentication credentials to secure InfluxDB, enable the InfluxDB Authentication option and add the credentials. Default value is disable.

  4. Configure the timeseries options (i.e., Interface Timeseries, Local Hosts Timeseries, Devices Timeseries and Other Timeseries) according to your preferences

  5. Click on Save button to save the preference configuration.

Once done, you will see the folder created under the /neteye/shared/influxdb/data/data/ location. Moreover, logs written successfully will be available when you run journalctl -u influxdb -f, like in this example:

Aug 31 11:02:31 lenovo31 influxd[476]: [httpd] ::1 - - [31/Aug/2020:11:02:31 +0200] "POST /write?db=ntopng  HTTP/1.1" 204 0 "-" "-" 2bd62e84-76f0-11e9-801c-f0761cfbf2d8 8555

The official documentation of ntopng timeseries with influxdb contains more information about the preference’s configuration.

Create grafana datasource to access timeseries data

The ntopng time-series historical data stored in the InfluxDB can also be used by ITOA module to display the real-time network traffic and flow collection performance metrics.

Before that, you need to configure a new data source in Grafana to access that historical data. To configure it, follow the following steps.

  1. Open ITOA Dashboard in NetEye and then select Data Sources option from the configuration menu.

  2. Click on the Add data source button and then select InfluxDB from the Time series database list.

  3. Now, configure these settings:

    • Name: <datasource-name> i.e ntop-influx

    • URL: http://<influxdb-domain>:8086

    • Database: <database-name> i.e. ntopng

    • User: admin

Note

The InfluxDB URL and Database name should be exactly the same as you used in ntopng (ntopng >> Settings >> Preferences >> Timeseries)

Troubleshooting

If the <database-name> folder does not exists in the specified location /neteye/shared/influxdb/data/data/ or if POST /write messages are not available, then from the ntopng timeseries preferences, switch the timeseries driver to RRD, then back to InfluxDB and restart the ntopng service.