Asopitech VS
Graphite vs Alopex Skulk
The Graphite combination of Carbon, Whisper and its web app, and how Alopex Skulk splits the work with Grafana.
Updated: Oct 15, 2026
What Graphite is
Graphite is a monitoring tool that does two things: it stores numeric time series and renders graphs of them on demand. It does not collect data; other tools send data to it.
How it works
- Carbon: daemons that receive time-series data. As an installation grows, relay and aggregator daemons are added to spread the load.
- Whisper: a fixed-size database library similar in design to RRD.
- Web app: a Django application that renders graphs on demand.
Main features
- Data shows up in graphs as soon as it is sent.
- Retention that keeps older data at coarser resolutions.
- A URL API for embedding graphs in other web pages.
Limits
Graphite is run as three components: Carbon, Whisper and the web app. It scales by adding more Carbon daemons.
How it differs from Alopex Skulk
Both store numeric time series and manage retention.
Graphite bundles storage and graph rendering. Alopex Skulk does not draw graphs; it focuses on storing and querying time series. Grafana draws the graphs and Alopex Skulk serves the data through Prometheus-compatible endpoints. Because it embeds in your app, you can start collecting before any monitoring stack exists.
Store with Alopex Skulk, draw with Grafana. Alopex Skulk explains how to set it up.