If you’ve ever taken a look at Graphite, you’ll notice a few things. Once you get it running it’s wonderful, but it’s a hell of a beast to install - the sheer number of tutorial posts on the web for “how to install Graphite” should be enough to make your mind spin.
If you get any level of serious use out of it, you’ll also find that it’s sort of a pain to scale. The Whisper file format is fine for some tinkering, but once you have a large number of machines sending metric data things can get ugly fast. All of a sudden, someone is spending far more time tending to Graphite then they are writing code or doing other useful stuff.
The problems with installation and scaling are two of the main reasons we’re so enthusiastic about Hosted Graphite. We’re replacing Graphite’s back-end with a scalable replacement based on Riak. You pay by the month, and can cancel at any time. You can send data via TCP, HTTP, UDP, or use something like StatsD. We support a wide range of client languages. You don’t need to install anything or jump through any hoops - it’s pretty much good to go. We offer a 7-day free trial to get you started.
For larger companies with existing Graphite installs, we can do some gradual on-boarding - ensuring that there is no interruption in your metrics while we gradually move you to a new, scalable, hassle-free metrics setup. Just give us a shout.