Heartbeat Output Plugin

This plugin sends a heartbeat signal via POST to a HTTP endpoint on a regular interval. This is useful to keep track of existing Telegraf instances in a large deployment.

Introduced in: Telegraf v1.37.0 Tags: applications OS support: all

Global configuration options

Plugins support additional global and plugin configuration settings for tasks such as modifying metrics, tags, and fields, creating aliases, and configuring plugin ordering. See CONFIGURATION.md for more details.

Secret-store support

This plugin supports secrets from secret-stores for the url, token and headers option. See the secret-store documentation for more details on how to use them.

Configuration

# A plugin that can transmit heartbeats over HTTP
[[outputs.heartbeat]]
  ## URL of heartbeat endpoint
  url = "http://monitoring.example.com/heartbeat"

  ## Unique identifier to submit for the Telegraf instance (required)
  instance_id = "agent-123"

  ## Token for bearer authentication
  # token = ""

  ## Interval for sending heartbeat messages
  # interval = "1m"

  ## Information to include in the message, available options are
  ##   hostname   -- hostname of the instance running Telegraf
  ##   statistics -- number of metrics, logged errors and warnings, etc
  ##   configs    -- redacted list of configs loaded by this instance
  # include = ["hostname"]

  ## Additional HTTP headers
  # [outputs.heartbeat.headers]
  #   User-Agent = "telegraf"

Each heartbeat message, sent every interval, contains at least the specified Telegraf instance_id, the Telegraf version and the version of the JSON-Schema used for the message. The latest schema can be found in the plugin directory.

Additional information can be included in the message via the include setting.

Statistics included in heartbeat messages are accumulated since the last successful heartbeat. If a heartbeat cannot be sent, accumulation of data continues until the next successful send. Additionally, message after a failed send the last field contains the Unix timestamp of the last successful heartbeat, allowing you to identify gaps in reporting and to calculate rates.

Configuration information

When including configs in the message, the heartbeat message will contain the configuration sources used to setup the currently running Telegraf instance.

The configuration information can potentially change when watching e.g. the configuration directory while a new configuration is added or removed.