influxdata / influxdata/telegraf

Configuration option to drop oldest or newest data in the buffer when buffer is full

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#15,217 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
feature request help wanted size/m
Dominant language
Go
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Description

### Use Case

Similar to https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/15208

(accommodating temporary high-write bursts to and influxdb instance)

Sometimes the newest data is more important to keep than the oldest data (if your computer failed, would you care more about what happened right before the failure or 5 minutes before the failure?)

Sometimes the oldest data is more important to keep than the newest data (ex: which events happened first in this very large burst of events?)

### Expected behavior

I expected to see a configuration option like "buffer_drop_strategy" which would default to "drop_oldest".

### Actual behavior

No configuration option to specify which metrics (newest or oldest) are dropped from the buffer.

### Additional info

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by locating the buffer implementation and its configuration handling, then determine how a buffer-full condition selects metrics to discard; done means a configurable drop strategy supports both oldest and newest data, with the documented default behavior covered by tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
observability-sre
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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