tcollector was created as part of the OpenTSDB project around 2010. OpenTSDB was developed at StumbleUpon (later acquired by Twitter) to store and serve massive amounts of time-series data on top of HBase. tcollector was designed as the metric collection agent that runs on each host and pushes data to OpenTSDB.
The name “tcollector” stands for “tag collector”—reflecting OpenTSDB’s tag-based metric model.
tcollector consists of:
Unlike traditional metrics systems, tcollector uses tags:
metric_name tag1=value1 tag2=value2 value
This model influenced Prometheus and other modern systems.
tcollector uses a dual license: LGPL-3.0 or GPL-3.0.
tcollector is in maintenance mode:
| Feature | tcollector | Telegraf | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Python | Go | Go |
| Model | Push | Push | Pull |
| Backend | OpenTSDB only | 200+ | Native + remote write |
| Tags | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Status | Maintenance | Active | Active |
tcollector introduced important concepts:
For teams using tcollector:
Any questions?
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