OpenTSDB
maintenanceby OpenTSDB community (originally StumbleUpon) · since 2010
HBase-backed time-series database from the Hadoop era; still in service, rarely chosen for new work.
maintenance. Dormant: last stable release 2.4.1 (Sept 2021), 2.5.0-RC1 tagged Dec 2024 with no activity since. Prefer VictoriaMetrics, Mimir or TimescaleDB for new work.
Overview
OpenTSDB stores metrics as rows in HBase (or Bigtable) behind stateless TSD daemons, which let early large-scale shops keep years of raw, undownsampled data on their Hadoop clusters. Its metric-plus-tags data model and simple telnet/HTTP put API influenced many later systems, and several modern TSDBs still accept the OpenTSDB protocol for compatibility. Development has largely stopped: the last stable release dates from 2021 and only a 2.5.0 release candidate followed in December 2024. Today it mostly matters for legacy installations and as an ingest format other databases import.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- +Keeps raw data indefinitely on HBase without downsampling
- +Stateless TSDs scale horizontally behind a load balancer
- +Simple, widely copied put protocol
- +Fits shops that already run Hadoop/HBase
Trade-offs
- −Effectively unmaintained since 2021
- −Requires operating HBase and ZooKeeper, which is heavy for a metrics store
- −No PromQL or SQL; query API is limited and slow on high-cardinality tags
- −No native retention or downsampling policies
Great for
- +Maintaining legacy Hadoop-era metrics pipelines
- +Archival metrics on an existing HBase cluster
Think twice for
- −New monitoring stacks
- −Kubernetes-native metrics
- −Teams without HBase expertise
Capabilities
Native or official first-party support · 2 of 25 tracked
Scale & consistency
- Comfortable data size
- Large · ≤ 1 PB
- Horizontal scaling
- Native
- Multi-region
- No
- Transactions
- None
- Consistency
- Strong
- Schema
- Schemaless
- Architecture
- Distributed, Client server
- Query languages
- OpenTSDB HTTP query API
Scales with the underlying HBase or Bigtable cluster; TSDs are stateless and added freely.
Deployment
Ecosystem
Alternatives to OpenTSDB
Resource-frugal, Prometheus-compatible metrics database, run as a single binary or a sharded cluster.
opentsdb vs victoriametrics →Java time-series database layered on Cassandra or ScyllaDB, from the OpenTSDB lineage.
opentsdb vs kairosdb →Purpose-built time-series database, rebuilt in Rust on Arrow, DataFusion and Parquet for version 3.
opentsdb vs influxdb →Grafana Labs' horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term store for Prometheus and OTLP metrics.
opentsdb vs grafana-mimir →CNCF-graduated pull-based monitoring system with a local TSDB, PromQL and alerting rules.
opentsdb vs prometheus →Hadoop's Bigtable clone: strongly consistent wide-column tables on top of HDFS.
opentsdb vs apache-hbase →OpenTSDB FAQ
What is OpenTSDB?
OpenTSDB is a time-series database by OpenTSDB community (originally StumbleUpon), first released in 2010. OpenTSDB stores metrics as rows in HBase (or Bigtable) behind stateless TSD daemons, which let early large-scale shops keep years of raw, undownsampled data on their Hadoop clusters. Its metric-plus-tags data model and simple telnet/HTTP put API influenced many later systems, and several modern TSDBs still accept the OpenTSDB protocol for compatibility. Development has largely stopped: the last stable release dates from 2021 and only a 2.5.0 release candidate followed in December 2024. Today it mostly matters for legacy installations and as an ingest format other databases import.
Is OpenTSDB open source?
Yes. OpenTSDB is open source. License: LGPL-2.1+ (with GPL-3.0+ components).
Does OpenTSDB support ACID transactions?
No. OpenTSDB does not provide ACID transactions; its consistency model is strong.
Does OpenTSDB scale horizontally?
OpenTSDB scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at large scale (≤ 1 PB).
How can I run OpenTSDB?
You can self-host it.
What is OpenTSDB best for?
OpenTSDB is a strong fit for maintaining legacy Hadoop-era metrics pipelines and archival metrics on an existing HBase cluster. Think twice for new monitoring stacks.
What are the best alternatives to OpenTSDB?
Common alternatives to OpenTSDB include VictoriaMetrics, KairosDB, InfluxDB, Grafana Mimir and Prometheus. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.
Is OpenTSDB still maintained?
OpenTSDB is in maintenance mode. Dormant: last stable release 2.4.1 (Sept 2021), 2.5.0-RC1 tagged Dec 2024 with no activity since. Prefer VictoriaMetrics, Mimir or TimescaleDB for new work.
How popular is OpenTSDB?
OpenTSDB ranks #349 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (6.9/100), and #19 among time-series databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.