RRDtool (''round-robin database tool'') is a data logging and graphing system for time series data. It aims to handle

time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. ...

data such as

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...

s or CPU load. The data is stored in a

circular buffer In computer science, a circular buffer, circular queue, cyclic buffer or ring buffer is a data structure that uses a single, fixed-size buffer as if it were connected end-to-end. This structure lends itself easily to buffering data streams. The ...

based

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time. It also includes tools to extract round-robin data in a graphical format, for which it was originally intended. Bindings exist for several programming languages, e.g.

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company ** TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

and Lua. There is an independent full

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

implementation called rrd4j.

General data storage

RRDtool assumes time-variable data in intervals of a certain length. This interval, usually named step, is specified upon creation of an RRD file and cannot be changed afterwards. Because data may not always be available at just the right time, RRDtool will automatically interpolate any submitted data to fit its internal time-steps. The value for a specific step, that has been interpolated, is named a primary data point (PDP). Multiple PDPs may be consolidated according to a consolidation function (CF) to form a consolidated data point (CDP). Typical consolidation functions are

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

, minimum, maximum. After the data has been consolidated, the resulting CDP is stored in a round-robin archive (RRA). A round-robin archive stores a fixed number of CDPs and specifies how many PDPs should be consolidated into one CDP and which CF to use. The total time covered by an RRA can be calculated as follows: : time covered = (#CDPs stored) × (#PDPs per CDP) × (step time length) After this time the archive will "wrap around": the next insertion will overwrite the oldest entry. This behavior in this context is referred to as "round-robin" and is the reason for the program's name. However this is different from the common computer science definition, which is a method of distributing resources among multiple consumers or processes. To cover several timespans and/or use several consolidation functions, an RRD file may contain multiple RRAs. The data retrieval function of RRDtool automatically selects the archive with the highest resolution that still covers the requested timespan. This mechanism is also used by RRDtool's graphing subsystem.

Release history

The following table contains the release history of RRDtool, showing its major releases.

Other tools that use RRDtool as a DBMS and/or graphing subsystem

* BackupPC *

Cacti A cactus (: cacti, cactuses, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae (), a family of the order Caryophyllales comprising about 127 genera with some 1,750 known species. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, ...

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

collectd collectd is a Unix daemon that collects, transfers and stores performance data of computers and network equipment. The acquired data is meant to help system administrators maintain an overview over available resources to detect existing or loomi ...

* Cricket *

Ganglia A ganglion (: ganglia) is a group of neuron cell bodies in the peripheral nervous system. In the somatic nervous system, this includes dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal ganglia among a few others. In the autonomic nervous system, there a ...

– system monitor

clusters may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study the magnetosphere * Asteroid cluster, a small ...

and grids *

lighttpd lighttpd (prescribed pronunciation: "lighty") is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical environments while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible. It was originally written by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the ...

* Lpar2rrd *

Monitorix Monitorix is a computer network monitoring tool that periodically collects system data and uses the web interface to show the information as graphs. Monitorix allows monitoring of overall system performance, and can help detect bottlenecks, failure ...

MRTG The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is free software for monitoring and measuring the traffic load on network links. It allows the user to see traffic load on a network over time in graphical form. It was originally developed by Tobias O ...

* Munin *

Nagios Nagios is an event monitoring system that offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, switches, applications and services. It alerts users when things go wrong and alerts them a second time when the problem has been resolved. Ethan ...

* Nmon * NMIS * ntop *

OpenNMS OpenNMS is a free and open-source enterprise grade network monitoring and network management platform. It is developed and supported by a community of users and developers and by the OpenNMS Group, offering commercial services, training and suppo ...

pfSense pfSense is a firewall/ router computer software distribution based on FreeBSD. The open source pfSense Community Edition (CE) and pfSense Plus is installed on a physical computer or a virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is ...

Plesk Plesk is commercial web hosting and server data center automation software developed for Linux and Windows-based retail hosting service providers. It was developed by Plesk International GmbH'','' a company with headquarters in Toronto, Canad ...

* Xymon * Zenoss Core

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rrdtool Internet Protocol based network software Free network management software Free software programmed in C Free database management systems 1999 software Time series software

General data storage

Release history

Other tools that use RRDtool as a DBMS and/or graphing subsystem

See also

References

External links