4 min Analytics

InfluxData & AWS clock in for time-series developer analytics 

InfluxData & AWS clock in for time-series developer analytics 

Data is speeding up. This reality means that our systems and applications are now moving towards an increasing amount of real-time data processing, many using data streaming solutions and time-series database offerings. News in this space this month sees time-series platform company InfluxDB, announce a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB.

As it sounds, Amazon Timestream is a serverless time-series database service for operational applications. It is purpose-built for workloads from Internet of Things (IoT) low-latency queries to large-scale data ingestion. Amazon Timestream for LiveAnalytics (an AWS time-series database brand name that has been through various iterations, but basically still Amazon Timestream) can ingest more than tens of gigabytes of time-series data per minute and run SQL queries on terabytes of time-series data in seconds to identify trends and patterns in near real-time. 

Why is an InfluxData partnership happening here and what does InfluxData offer?

InfluxData is the creator of the InfluxDB time-series platform used to collect, store and analyse time-series data and allow developers and data scientists to query and analyse their time-stamped data in real-time. With Timestream for InfluxDB, users can run open source InfluxDB databases on AWS for time-series applications, such as real-time alerting and monitoring infrastructure reliability, with millisecond response times. 

InfluxDB open source now offered as a managed service for time series data powered by AWS, accessible within the AWS Management Console.
“InfluxData is deeply committed to open source – both building an open, permissively licensed product and making it accessible to as many developers as possible through simple and logical entry points and wide availability,” said Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData. 

Keen to extol the virtues of both cloud itself and the opportunity to now work with AWS more closely, Kaplan reminds us that time-series databases are a fundamental component of the modern data stack. 

“By analysing millions of time-series data points per second, time-series databases help detect failures, improve reliability and predict behavior for information technology monitoring and IoT and Industrial Internet of Things (IoT/IIoT) processes to enable real-time analytics,” said Kaplan. 

The InfluxDB team suggest that the high-growth market for time-series databases can now be used to power real-time analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) training models. By working with InfluxData, AWS developers now have a simple way to manage and derive value from time-series data within the AWS Management Console.

Open source API connections

“We’re delighted to offer a managed service for InfluxDB. With Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB, now customers with stringent latency requirements for their time-series applications can benefit from open source APIs and the ease-of-use that our customers enjoy with managed database services on AWS, reduced operational burden and enhanced reliability for their InfluxDB workloads,” said Jeff Carter, VP of databases and migration services at AWS. “Our work with InfluxData brings one of the most popular open-source time-series databases as a managed service for AWS customers.”

With Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB, users get a single-instance open source version of InfluxDB immediately by creating a managed instance automatically configured for optimal performance and availability. There are no upfront costs, licenses, or commitments required and customers only pay for the resources they use.

Single-node workload?

The initial Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB offering is based on InfluxDB OSS 2.x, making it suitable for open source users with workloads that only require a single-node instance. Through the console, customers can opt into additional performance and scalability capabilities. This includes high availability with multiple AWS Availability Zones (multi-AZ) for synchronous data replication and backup across AZs in 60 seconds with zero data loss. 

Customers using InfluxDB OSS 2.x can get started with the AWS managed service by using the AWS Management Console, CLI, CDK, or AWS CloudFormation to create a new InfluxDB database instance. Once created, customers can use the InfluxDB APIs to restore backups from self-managed database instances. 

In the future, Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB will expand to offer additional InfluxDB versions including the new InfluxDB 3.0 product line via InfluxDB Community, currently in development. AWS and InfluxData will also collaborate to offer AWS customers additional new modules, specific to the new 3.0 product offering. This includes a Scale Module for distributed querying from multiple instances and a Security Module for fine-grained permissions, single sign-on and audit logging.

Developers who want to experience the benefits of InfluxDB 3.0 and AWS can get started with InfluxDB Cloud Serverless, which runs on AWS and delivers a managed, elastic database running on multi-tenant cloud infrastructure. InfluxDB Cloud Dedicated also runs on AWS and provides users with dedicated, fully-managed cloud infrastructure optimised for large-scale workloads with added enterprise-grade security features.