Tink vs Graphite
Graphite is classic open-source metric storage: carbon receives points, whisper keeps them, graphite-web draws graphs. That is not a mechanic. Tink installs in one command, watches the Linux server, explains what is wrong, and helps you fix it.
Graphite stores points. Tink answers “why is this VPS sick?”
Accidental sysadmins land on Graphite because every older monitoring tutorial starts with carbon and whisper. Then the disk fills, nginx dies, and Graphite is silent — no collector shipped a point, so no graph moved.
Tink is the other job: detect the issue on the machine, say why it happened in plain English, propose the command, and run it only after you approve. Keep Graphite if you already need a TSDB for custom metrics. Use Tink if you run Linux servers and want a mechanic.
| Feature | Tink | Graphite |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 30 seconds (one curl | sh command) | Hours to days — carbon-cache, whisper, graphite-web, and usually Grafana or StatsD on top |
| What you get | Working monitoring, diagnosis, and approved fixes | A metric store and graph UI. Alerts, diagnosis, and fixes are still your problem |
| Pricing | Free (Scout) / $9 / $29 per machine per month | Software is free — you pay for the Graphite host, disk for whisper, and the person who keeps carbon up |
| Hidden costs | None — fully managed | Whisper file sprawl, carbon-cache RAM, aggregation schemas, and a second stack for logs and alerts |
| Monitoring approach | Agent on the server — CPU, disk, services, logs, certs, ports | Agents (collectd, StatsD, diamond) push points into carbon. Graphite does not watch the box |
| Configuration | None after install — heuristics and AI | storage-schemas.conf, carbon relays, retention, and which metrics you actually graph |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes — AI explains root cause, impact, and fix | You read a graphite-web or Grafana panel, then SSH in to change the box |
| Fix execution | Proposes and executes approved commands with an audit trail | Storage only — Graphite cannot restart nginx or free disk |
| Alerting | Built-in across 8 channels | None first-class — pair Graphite with Grafana Alerting, Bosun, or another alerter |
| Predictive alerts | Yes — disk fills in ~6 days, memory and CPU trends | Not a Graphite job — whisper stores history, it does not forecast a sick VPS |
| SSH brute-force detection | Built-in — parses auth.log every scan | Out of scope — auth logs never become carbon points unless you built that |
| Machine offline detection | Agent presence monitoring with multi-channel alerts | Missing datapoints if the sender dies — if you built a deadman check |
| Public status page | Shareable URL with 90-day history | Internal graphite-web — customer status is extra work |
| Weekly fleet digest | Automated Monday digest + daily brief when issues are open | Dashboard panels — not a plain-English fleet narrative |
| On-call tracking | Built-in /oncall command + incident acknowledgment | Not included — wire Grafana/Graphite alerts into PagerDuty or another incident tool |
| Conversation interface | Telegram, WhatsApp, web dashboard, CLI | graphite-web and Grafana. No mechanic you can ask why disk filled |
| Learning curve | None — works after install | Moderate — carbon, whisper retentions, render API, and which collector still ships points |
| Best for | Freelancers, small teams, accidental sysadmins (1-50 Linux servers) | Teams that already run Graphite as a TSDB and only need graphs, not a sick-VPS mechanic |
When Graphite is the right choice
Keep Graphite when you already want that exact job:
- A metric TSDB you operate — carbon and whisper are the store, not a mechanic.
- Existing StatsD or collectd pipelines — points already flow into Graphite and Grafana.
- Render API and whisper retentions — you need that exact graphing model, not a diagnosis.
- Custom app metrics, not a sick VPS — you graph counters more than disk, certs, and nginx.
The real cost of “just run Graphite”
The carbon daemon is in every old README. A working ops loop for five Linux boxes is not:
- A graph still means you SSH in and change the box by hand
- Disk, nginx, certs, and SSH brute-force never appear as carbon points
- Self-hosting carbon plus whisper is its own server to keep healthy
- A single VPS with no collector still needs a mechanic, not a render API
For a 5-server team, Tink Mechanic at $45/month is cheaper than the host, disk, and hours you spend keeping Graphite itself online, and every scan includes a diagnosis a whisper file will not type.
No carbon homework. No whisper files. No silent host. One command install.
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