InfluxDB vs. Sensu, by Sumo Logic

InfluxDB is a time series database and should be used in that intent. Each data ingestion streams should be properly configured to ensure optimal database performance. InfluxDB works very well but like any other databases requires maintenance and tuning. We have been using the TICK stack and are very happy with the results.

Incentivized

Sooner or later, companies are going to figure out that there's more to monitoring than what Nagios can provide. For those that want to dip their toe in the water and still provide backward compatibility with a legacy Nagios environment, Sensu is a good choice. It's mainly for businesses that want more than Nagios but don't want to take the full plunge with something radically different and metric-based such as Prometheus. Having moved to metric-based monitoring so far as I'm able, I can say with confidence that it's far better than what Nagios or Sensu provide.

Incentivized

• Time series data
• Very fast queries
• Many options to configure and tune database

Incentivized

• Unique concept as a "monitoring router" that can tie services together.
• Backward-compatible with Nagios environments.
• More of a DevOps focus than Nagios.

Incentivized

• Small, but growing community - This database engine's community is much smaller than alternatives. This can make finding a DBA or support less easy, but not impossible.
• Documentation could be improved - The docs for getting started don't effectively lead first-time users to understand how the underlying systems are designed.
• Performance Analysis - There seems to be a lack of tools to give context to slow queries or other performance issues
• Out-of-the-box security - The out of the box security is designed to operate in an internal network and is limited.

Incentivized

• Cannot be solely used for tracking metrics over time.
• Not a very good UI.

Incentivized

InfluxDB is a near perfect product for time series database engines. The relatively small list of cons are heavily outweighed by it's ability to just work and be a very flexible and powerful database engine. The community and support provided by the corporation are the only areas I have little experience.

Incentivized

We have worked with the InfluxDB support team a few times so far and it has been positive. Issues submitted are worked on promptly and we have good feedback.

Incentivized

Sensu's customer support was always willing to work with us but never really seemed to learn much from our experiences. I think they get a lot of customers with DevOps IT teams that are willing to put in a lot of elbow grease to get the most of Sensu's architecture. However, despite explaining my continued disappointment with their documentation and the overall flow of the product, I never got much more than a "sorry" and a notice that their documentation was open source if I wanted to contribute to it. The problem, of course, is that you can't document what you don't understand. I'm a former technical writer, so I know that better than most.

Incentivized

We have looked around to find different options we had when we first started to move to cloud. At that time, the options we had is Google Cloud BigTable and InfluxDB. But quickly we realized that InfluxDB is the database specialized in time series database and performs better than other options we have.

Incentivized

Have used New Relic and Sematext Cloud for APM and for tracking over days and visualizing the issues. But those are very expensive as compared to Sensu.

Incentivized

• Provided us a time series DB.
• With the SQL-like language, it is very easy to learn.
• Empowered us to keep track of our events.

Incentivized

• Can easily understand and extend use-cases to under server capabilities.
• Can use it to scale well.
• Can help in efficient resource planning.

Incentivized