[rrd-users] gauges

[Simon Hobson]

R Dicaire wrote:
>Hi folks....I'm having difficulty understanding some concepts using
>GAUGE with rrd creation.
>My goal is to do hourly reporting. I've spent a couple weeks going
>over the websites docs and tutorials and I've found some of the
>information helpful, but the rest seem over my head, causing more
>confusion than anything else.
>
>For GAUGE types, do I *need* RRAs of MIN MAX and AVERAGE? Would *just*
>LAST work best, and if not, why not?

What are YOUR requirements ? RRD does not impose any particular 
schema, you are free to define whatever meets your requirements.

>Since I want to report hourly, is there a need to have more than one
>update inserted into the rrd per hour, and if so, why?

No, not if all you want is one sample per hour.

So, if all you want is one sample, on the hour, then all you need is 
one update per hour - and 'last' will probably do you (though with 
one data point, min, max, average, and last are all the same). On the 
other hand, if you want to be able to see what the data did in 
between, then you might want more frequent updates and 
min/max/average as required.