Import and export is available on the KairosDB server from the command line.
To export data from KairosDB run the following command:
> bin/kairosdb.sh export -f export.txt
The format of the export is one metric per line in the form of a json object. This can be really verbose but it lets you do interesting things with the data after exporting. If size is an issue try this:
> bin/kairosdb.sh export | gzip > export.gz
-f <filename> – file to write output to. If not specified, the output goes to stdout.
-n <metricName> – name of metric to export. If not specified, then all metrics are exported.
To import the data we exported in the step above you can do this:
> bin/kairosdb.sh import -f export.txt
If you happened to compress the export you can pipe it back into the system like this:
> gzip -dc export.gz | bin/kairosdb.sh import
-f <filename> – file to import. If not specified the input comes from stdin.
Here is the performance of the import process.
The machine: Intel i5 (4 cores) 12 Gigs ram. The machine has two drives one SSD and the other is a platter drive. Cassandra (single instance) and KairosDB are running on the same machine.
The data: 31,341,782 metrics, the majority of which is the same metric and tags, which means it will be writing into a single row.
Results
| Cassandra Memory | Location of Data | Metrics per second |
| 1 Gig | data and commit log on SSD | 74,623 |
| 1 Gig | data on platter, commit log on SSD | 93,837 |
| 2 Gig | data on platter, commit log on SSD | 132,804 |