[rrd-users] meaning of "min" and "max" for COUNTER data sources?

[ciaran deignan]

Hi All,

The RRD documentation "reccomends" setting MIN and MAX values for
all data-sources when creating the RRD files. But all the examples
show this with a GUAGE DS-type, where MAX is obviously the biggest value
the counter can ever hold.

How is MAX interpreted for a COUNTER DS-type? Does it represent the
maximum increment over the previous data-point? What if the previous
data-point is two "steps" back in time? Is the MAX a maximum per-step
increment? Or is it configured as a rate directly and multiplied by
the step interval and the number of steps?

For example, I'm just starting to experiment with RRD, and I'm logging
sysUpTime from SNMP as a sanity check. The rate-of-change of the counter
is one-second-per-second ;) Should I declare the DS as

    rrdtool create --step 60 DS:sysUpTime:COUNTER:360:0:60
or
    rrdtool create --step 60 DS:sysUpTime:COUNTER:360:0:1
???

Currently I have it declared at 600 to be on the safe side, and it works 
fine ;)
But my ignorance is a factor of 60! I have other counters that I want to 
limit
and plus-or-minus 60000 %  seems a bit unreasonable ;)

thanks
Ciaran

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