Telegraf is a monitoring agent application developed by InfluxData as part of Tick Stack. This application is written in Go and is used for collecting system performance metrics. Telegraf can collect metrics from a wide array of inputs and write them into a wide array of outputs. It is plugin-driven for both collection and output of data so it is easily extendable.

With over 200+ plugins available written by subject matter experts on the data in the community, it is easy to start collecting metrics from your end-points. You can easily add new inputs and outputs to suit your monitoring desires.
How To Install Telegraf on Debian 10 – Buster
In this guide, I’ll show you how to install and configure Telegraf on Debian 10 (Buster) Linux system.
Step 1: Update System
Update your Debian system.
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade
Step 2: Add Influxdata repository
The pre-packaged Go binaries for Telegraf are available on Influxdata repository.
Import repository GPG key.
sudo apt install -y gnupg2 curl wget
wget -qO- https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key | sudo apt-key add -
Add InfluxDB APT repository using the command below.
echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian buster stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
Once the repository is added, install Telegraf on Debian 10 (Buster).
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install telegraf
Step 3: Configure Telegraf on Debian 10
Start and enable telegraf service.
$ systemctl status telegraf ● telegraf.service - The plugin-driven server agent for reporting metrics into InfluxDB Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/telegraf.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2019-10-23 16:10:04 UTC; 27s ago Docs: https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf Main PID: 7514 (telegraf) Tasks: 10 (limit: 4719) Memory: 23.1M CGroup: /system.slice/telegraf.service └─7514 /usr/bin/telegraf -config /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf -config-directory /etc/telegraf/telegraf.d Oct 23 16:10:04 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:04Z I! Loaded aggregators: Oct 23 16:10:04 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:04Z I! Loaded processors: Oct 23 16:10:04 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:04Z I! Loaded outputs: influxdb Oct 23 16:10:04 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:04Z I! Tags enabled: host=deb10 Oct 23 16:10:04 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:04Z I! [agent] Config: Interval:10s, Quiet:false, Hostname:"deb10", Flush Interval:10s Oct 23 16:10:04 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:04Z W! [outputs.influxdb] when writing to [http://localhost:8086]: database "" creation fail Oct 23 16:10:20 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:20Z E! [outputs.influxdb] when writing to [http://localhost:8086]: Post http://localhost:808 Oct 23 16:10:20 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:20Z E! [agent] Error writing to outputs.influxdb: could not write any address Oct 23 16:10:30 deb10 telegraf[7514]: 2019-10-23T16:10:30Z E! [outputs.influxdb] when writing to [http://localhost:8086]: Post http://localhost:808
The main configuration file for telegraf is /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf
. Most sections are commented out, but you can uncomment to unlock the inputs, outputs and configurations you wish to use.
We have a guide on monitoring of Linux system with Telegraf and Grafana:
Monitor Linux System with Grafana and Telegraf
This requires InfluxDB and Grafana installed, use below guides: