Sparkplug InfluxDB Extension for HiveMQ

Purpose

The HiveMQ Sparkplug Extension can be leveraged to gather sparkplug metrics from HiveMQ and persist them into a InfluxDB database. This database can be used as the data source for a monitoring dashboard to monitor directly the data from the devices and gateways of a Sparkplug Infrastructure.

This extension is not yet ready for production use.

If you want use this in production, please contact HiveMQ contact@hivemq.com

Flow

Installation

Installing the extension for HiveMQ is very easy:

1. Unzip the downloaded zip file

2. In the folder hivemq-sparkplug-extension, modify the sparkplug.properties file to fit your needs. Check that the mandatory properties for influx db (host, port) are set

3. Copy the folder hivemq-sparkplug-extension to your [HIVEMQ_HOME]/extensions folder

4. Done

Configuration

The Sparkplug Monitoring extension uses its own configuration file sparkplug.properties. The extension won’t start if this file is missing or the required properties are not set.

Dashboards

2 InfluxDB example dashboards are provided in the deploy subfolder of this extension.

Influx dashboard	Description
HiveMQInfluxDB-Dashboard.json	HiveMQ dashboard with the most useful hivemq metrics
SparkplugInfluxDB-Dashboard.json	Sparkplug example dashboard, that vizualizes data of 2 edge nodes and their related devices.

General Configuration

Config name	Required	Description	Default
influxdb.mode	no	The mode configured for the InfluxDB sender. Possibilities are: http, tcp, udp, cloud	http
influxdb.host	yes	The host name of the InfluxDB instance.	-
influxdb.port	yes	The port number the InfluxDB instance is listening.	8086
influxdb.protocol	no	The protocol the InfluxDB sender uses in http mode.	http
influxdb.auth	no	The authorization string to be used to connect to InfluxDB, of format username:password. If mode "cloud" is used, the token must be passed here	-
influxdb.prefix	no	The measurement prefix.	-
influxdb.database	no	The database name.	hivemq
influxdb.reportingInterval	no	The reporting interval in seconds.	1
influxdb.connectTimeout	no	The connect and read timeout in seconds.	5000
influxdb.tags	no	The tags for each metric. Listed as a semicolon ( ; ) separated list.	-
influxdb.organization	only for mode: "cloud"	The organization to push data to	-
influxdb.bucket	only for mode: "cloud"	The bucket to push data to	-
sparkplug.version	no	The sparkplug version to be used	spBv1.0

Example Configuration to connect to a local influxdb 2.0

influxdb.mode:cloud
influxdb.host:localhost
influxdb.port:8086
influxdb.protocol:http
influxdb.auth:<your token>

influxdb.bucket:hivemq
influxdb.organization:<your company>

influxdb.reportingInterval:1
influxdb.connectTimeout:5000

influxdb.tags:host=localhost

First Steps

InfluxDB Setup

If you don’t already have an InfluxDB 2.0 instance set up, here is a instruction how to start and configure an InfluxDB instance with Docker.

1. Download and install Docker for your platform

2. Start an InfluxDB docker container with the command docker run -p 8086:8086 -v $PWD:/var/lib/influxdb influxdb. For more information about using InfluxDB with Docker visit the official Docker repository for InfluxDB

3. A local instance of InfluxDB should be running with the port for the database set to 8086

4. The initial setup process for InfluxDB walks through creating a default organization, user, bucket, and Admin authentication token. The setup process is available in both the InfluxDB user interface (UI) and in the influx command line interface (CLI).

5. UI Setup - With InfluxDB running, visit localhost:8086.

   1. Click Get Started

   2. Set up your initial user

   3. Enter a Username for your initial user.

   4. Enter a Password and Confirm Password for your user.

   5. Enter your initial Organization Name.

   6. Enter your initial Bucket Name.

   7. Click Continue.

6. Done

Sparkplug Setup

The Extensions actual supports the Sparkplug B specification for payload. The sparkplug schema is defined with protobuf.

Usage

After the extension is installed and an InfluxDB instance exists.

1. Start HiveMQ

2. Extension successfully started if configuration file exists and contains required properties

Example Deployment

For testing purposes a simple HiveMQ docker file with the sparkplug extension and a compose file for influxDB setup is available in the deploy/docker subfolder. Further a Kubernetes script for deploying hivemq with sparkplug extension setup in Kuberntes is available in the deploy/k8s

Influx Dashboard

An influx dashboard example SparkplugInfluxDB-Dashboard.json is available in the deploy subfolder. The dashboard contains diagrams to monitor the Sparkplug online status of edge nodes and devices. It also gathered the sparkplug data values from the example devices.

Need Help?

If you encounter any problems, we are happy to help. The best place to get in contact is our support.

Contributing

If you want to contribute to HiveMQ Sparkplug Extension, see the contribution guidelines.

License

HiveMQ Sparkplug Extension is licensed under the APACHE LICENSE, VERSION 2.0. A copy of the license can be found here.