[rrd-users] RRD Not Storing Historical Gauge Data

[William R. Lorenz]

Alex and Darren,

On Tue, 4 Nov 2008, A Darren Dunham wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 10:09:47AM -0500, William R. Lorenz wrote:

>>    rrdtool create host_1.rrd \
>>      --start 1225580613 -s 60 \
>>      DS:min:GAUGE:120:U:U \

> So you've set your heartbeat to 120 seconds.

>>    rrdtool update host_1.rrd 1225580613:161.429:163.724:167.428:2.055:100
>>    rrdtool update host_1.rrd 1225581006:159.928:161.264:163.551:1.513:100

> But it appears all of your updates are more than 120 seconds apart.

That was it.  I had thought the script that performs the iterative tests 
was running more frequently.  With the updated HB, it works like a champ.

For a gauge-based application such as this, whereas the times gauge 
readings are available may vary between 1-45 minutes, would there be any 
harm in setting a high heartbeat, such as 3600 seconds (60 minutes)?  I 
would assume the average would be calculated between steps/intervals, per 
the documentation?  Would a heartbeat value of '0' cause RRD not to apply 
heartbeat NaNs, and as such the average would be taken for all intervals?

-- 
William R. Lorenz