Can Graphite (whisper) metrics be renamed?

Question

I'm preparing to refactor some Graphite metric names, and would like to be able to preserve the historical data. Can the .wsp files be renamed (and possibly moved to new directories if the higher level components change)?

Example: group.subgroup1.metric is stored as:

/opt/graphite/storage/whisper/group/subgroup1/metric.wsp

Can I simply stop loading data and move metric.wsp to metricnew.wsp?

Can I move metric.wsp to whisper/group/subgroup2/metric.asp?

Answer 1

Yes.

The storage architecture is pretty flexible. Rename/move/delete away, just make sure update your storage-schema and aggregation settings for the new location/pattern.

More advanced use cases, like merging into existing whisper files, can get tricky but also can be done with the help of the included scripts. This contains an overview of the Whisper Scripts included. Check it out: https://github.com/graphite-project/whisper

That said, it sounds like you don't already have existing data in the new target location so you can just move them.