Documentation

Telegraf

Integrate with external plugins

External plugins are external programs that are built outside of Telegraf that can run through an execd plugin. These external plugins allow for more flexibility compared to internal Telegraf plugins. Benefits to using external plugins include:

  • Access to libraries not written in Go
  • Using licensed software (not available to open source community)
  • Including large dependencies that would otherwise bloat Telegraf
  • Using your external plugin immediately without waiting for the Telegraf team to publish
  • Easily convert plugins between internal and external using the shim

Use the execd shim

The shim makes it easy to extract an internal input, processor, or output plugin from the main Telegraf repo out to a stand-alone repo. This allows anyone to build and run it as a separate app using one of the execd plugins:

Extract a plugin using the shim wrapper

  1. Move the project to an external repo. We recommend preserving the path structure: for example, if your plugin was located at plugins/inputs/cpu in the Telegraf repo, move it to plugins/inputs/cpu in the new repo.
  2. Copy main.go into your project under the cmd folder. This serves as the entry point to the plugin when run as a stand-alone program.

    The shim isn’t designed to run multiple plugins at the same time, so include only one plugin per repo.

    Write an external plugin

    Set up your plugin to use it with execd.

    For listed external plugins, the author of the external plugin is also responsible for the maintenance and feature development of external plugins.

    1. Write your Telegraf plugin. Follow InfluxData’s best practices:
    2. If your plugin is written in Go, follow the steps for the Execd Go Shim.
    3. Add usage and development instructions in the homepage of your repository for running your plugin with its respective execd plugin. Refer to openvpn and awsalarms for examples. Include the following steps:
      • How to download the release package for your platform or how to clone the binary for your external plugin
      • Commands to build your binary
      • Location to edit your telegraf.conf
      • Configuration to run your external plugin with inputs.execd, processors.execd or outputs.execd
    4. Submit your plugin by opening a PR to add your external plugin to the /EXTERNAL_PLUGINS.md list. Include the plugin name, a link to the plugin repository and a short description of the plugin.

    Was this page helpful?

    Thank you for your feedback!

© 2025 InfluxData, Inc.

Where are you running InfluxDB?

Select your InfluxDB Cloud region and cluster or your InfluxDB OSS URL and we’ll customize code examples for you. Identify your InfluxDB Cloud cluster.

  • InfluxDB Cloud
  • InfluxDB OSS or Enterprise
AWS

  • US West (Oregon)

GCP
Azure
Default
Custom

For more information, see InfluxDB Cloud regions or InfluxDB OSS URLs.

Thank you for your feedback!

Let us know what we can do better:

Thank you!

No thanks

The future of Flux

Flux is going into maintenance mode. You can continue using it as you currently are without any changes to your code.

Read more

Now Generally Available

InfluxDB 3 Core and Enterprise

Start fast. Scale faster.

Get the Updates

InfluxDB 3 Core is an open source, high-speed, recent-data engine that collects and processes data in real-time and persists it to local disk or object storage. InfluxDB 3 Enterprise builds on Core’s foundation, adding high availability, read replicas, enhanced security, and data compaction for faster queries and optimized storage. A free tier of InfluxDB 3 Enterprise is available for non-commercial at-home or hobbyist use.

For more information, check out:

Ask AI