[rrd-users] trying to understand the relationship between source data, what's in rrd and what gets plotted

[Simon Hobson]

Mark Seger wrote:

>I think what rrd shines at is being able to archive data at very coarse
>time intervals, ultimately being able to show you things like average
>loads, etc where you're really only interested in trends and I want to
>look at diagnostic data and never lose a data point.

Well you CAN do that (store the detailed data) if you set things up 
right - but to get a scatter plot of every data point you will have 
to use a different plotting tool.

>   In fact, my data
>collection tool runs on our systems 24 hours a day and saves a rolling
>week's worth of data.  Most people only look at the data when something
>goes wrong and so having a year's worth isn't going to be of any value
>for trouble shooting purposes.  On the other hand if I take the data I
>collect and roll it into rrd when it's over a week old and about to be
>discarded, it could prove to be a very useful mechanism for that and I
>will continue to consider that as an option.

It could well be that the other tools are better for your job. It 
sounds like you need more than one tool in this case.