Sparkplug InfluxDB Extension for HiveMQ

Purpose

The HiveMQ Sparkplug Extension can be leveraged to gather MQTT 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 to use this in production, please contact HiveMQ at contact@hivemq.com.

Flow

Installation

Installing the extension for HiveMQ is very easy:

Unzip the downloaded zip file
In the folder hivemq-sparkplug-extension, modify the sparkplug.properties file to fit your needs. Check that the mandatory properties from influxDB (host, port) are set.
Copy the folder hivemq-sparkplug-extension to your [HIVEMQ_HOME]/extensions folder
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.

InfluxDB 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.

Sparkplug Dashboard with HiveMQ and InfluxDB

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

Quick start Sparkplug

InfluxDB setup

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

Download and install Docker for your platform
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
A local instance of InfluxDB should be running with the port for the database set to 8086
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).
UI Setup - With InfluxDB running, visit localhost:8086:
- Click Get Started
- Set up your initial user
- Enter a Username for your initial user
- Enter a Password and Confirm Password for your user
- Enter your initial Organization Name
- Enter your initial Bucket Name
- Click Continue
- Done

Sparkplug setup

The extension supports the Sparkplug B specification for a payload. The Sparkplug schema is defined with protobuf.

Usage

After the extension is installed and an InfluxDB instance exists.

Start HiveMQ
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 Kubernetes 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.

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.

Need help?

We're always happy to answer any questions you may have during installation. The best place to get in contact is our community forum.

HiveMQ Extension

Sparkplug and InfluxDB