[rrd-users] counting errors in rrd

[Simon Hobson]

mathew anderson wrote:

>I have a single RRD file that has the value 100 in places.  Whenever 
>my monitoring sees an error (probes every 5 mins), it pushes a 100 
>into an rrd file.  I am trying to figure out how many times this 
>value is in a given time range.

Are you aware that except under certain very strict conditions, what 
is stored is NOT what you entered ?
ALL input data is normalised, and then consolidated. If your data 
entry times don't exactly match step boundaries then it normalisation 
will alter it. Suppose your step time was 1 minute (60 seconds), 
you'd been entering zeros, then at 20s past the minute you enter 100, 
and 20s past the next minute you enter zero again, and continue 
entering zeros. The nomalisation means that for your one minute with 
a value of 100, 2/3 (ie 66.6) will go into one step period, and the 
rest (33.3) will go into the next. So you'd get out 0, 0, 66.6, 33.3, 
0, 0

Then say you had a consolidation for 10 minute periods. The 
consolidated average for that would then be 10 (assuming both the 
non-zero normalised values fall into the same consolidated time 
period).

See : http://www.vandenbogaerdt.nl/rrdtool/
In particular the one on Rates, normalizing and consolidating

Also, note that all time periods are referenced to unix epoch 
(midnight, 1st Jan 1970). So with a step time of 300, step periods 
start on the hour, 5 minutes past the hour, etc. If you consolidate 6 
PDPs to a CDP (ie 1/2 hour) then these consolidated periods will be 
on the hour and half hour.


Given that you seem to be logging errors, it may be better to log the 
error count rather than a flag. If the errors are reported as a 
count, then use a counter data type and rrd will take care of 
converting that to a rate. You can then get rrd graph to do logic 
such as "if rate > some_threshold then draw it in red".

-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as
Christmas stocking fillers. Some available as e-books.