RRDTool

What is RRDtool?

If you know MRTG, you can think of RRDtool as a reimplementation of MRTGs graphing and logging features. Magnitudes faster and more flexible than you ever thought possible

RRD is the Acronym for Round Robin Database. RRD is a system to store and display time-series data (i.e. network bandwidth, machine-room temperature, server load average). It stores the data in a very compact way that will not expand over time, and it presents useful graphs by processing the data to enforce a certain data density. It can be used either via simple wrapper scripts (from shell or Perl) or via frontends that poll network devices and put a friendly user interface on it.

Some call it the industry standard data logging and graphing application.

• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/
• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/tut/index.en.html
• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/tutorial/rrdbeginners.html

Pointers

• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/
• tools - http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/pub/contrib/
• http://conferences.oreillynet.com/presentations/os2005/oetiker_tobias.pdf
• DataVisualization
• LogStatistics
• UnixGeekTools - other great tools for unix geeks

Command Line

rrdcreate

• Set up a new Round Robin Database
• http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc/rrdcreate.en.html

    rrdtool create temperature.rrd --step 300 DS:temp:GAUGE:600:-273:5000 \
            RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:1200 RRA:MIN:0.5:12:2400 RRA:MAX:0.5:12:2400 RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:12:2400

This sets up an RRD called temperature.rrd which accepts one temperature value every 300 seconds. If no new data is supplied for more than 600 seconds, the temperature becomes UNKNOWN. The minimum acceptable value is -273 and the maximum is 5000.

A few archives areas are also defined. The first stores the temperatures supplied for 100 hours (1200 * 300 seconds = 100 hours). The second RRA stores the minimum temperature recorded over every hour (12 * 300 seconds = 1 hour), for 100 days (2400 hours). The third and the fourth RRA's do the same for the maximum and average temperature, respectively.

update

• add data to existing RRD

    rrdtool update demo1.rrd N:3.44:3.15:U:23
    rrdtool update demo2.rrd 887457267:U 887457521:22 887457903:2.7

• U = UNKNOWN

rrdgraph

• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/doc/rrdgraph.en.html
• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/doc/rrdgraph_data.en.html
• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/doc/rrdgraph_rpn.en.html
• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/doc/rrdgraph_examples.en.html
• http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/tut/rrdtutorial.en.html

rrdcgi

• create web pages containing RRD graphs based on templates
• http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc/rrdcgi.en.html
• --lazy option in RRD graph can be used to make sure that graphs are only regenerated when they are out of date.

Backup and restore, import and export

    rrdtool dump original.rrd > data.xml
    scp data.xml servername:/tmp/
    rrdtool restore data.xml new.rrd

• .rrd files are not cross-platform and must be dump/restored to carry between systems

Perl

• RRDs: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/prog/RRDs.en.html

rrdpoller

• Retrieve RRD file data and apply some threshold algorithm
• command line query rrd file data specifying thresholds
• nagios integration from RRDs

RRDTool::OO

• Object-oriented interface to RRDTool
• requires specific old version of RRDtool

Other

- RRD::Simple

- RRD::Query

- RRD::Threshold

- Log::Log4perl::Appender::RRDs - Log to a RRDtool Archive

- POE::Component::RRDTool - POE interface to RRDtool

Front-ends

• MRTG

Cricket

• http://cricket.sourceforge.net/
• Cricket is a high performance, extremely flexible system for monitoring trends in time-series data.
• designed to solve several weaknesses in MRTG

cacti

• http://www.cacti.net/
• Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool

Holt Winters

• triple exponential smoothing
  • trend and seasonality
• pointers
  • aberrant behavior detection in time series for network monitoring
  • http://cricket.sourceforge.net/aberrant/rrd_hw.htm - cricket docs
  • rrd fu for graphing confidence bands and failures

Cookbook

graphing maximums

- maximum

rrdtool graph graph.png \
    DEF:a=data.rrd:a:AVERAGE \
    VDEF:max=a,MAXIMUM \
    LINE2:a#00ff00:outgoing \
    LINE1:max#ff0000:maximum\\g \
    VRULE:max#ff0000 \
    GPRINT:max:"at %.2lf"

- 95%-tile

rrdtool graph.png \
    DEF:in=data.rrd:input \
    DEF:out=data.rrd:output \
    CDEF:base=in,out,MAX \
    VDEF:n95=base,95,PERCENT \
    AREA:in#0000b0:incoming \
    AREA:out#00ff0080:outgoing
    LINE1:base#000000:maximum \
    LINE1:n95#ff0000:"95%-tile "\
    GRPINT:n95:"at %.2lf %s"

match MRTG database

• mrtg db
  • weekly starts where daily stops

600 5-minute samples: 2 days and 2 hours
600 30-minute samples: 12.5 days
600 2-hour samples: 50 days
732 1-day samples: 732 days

• rrdtool equivalent
  • weekly and daily start now

600 samples of 5 minutes (2 days and 2 hours)
700 samples of 30 minutes (2 days and 2 hours, plus 12.5 days)
775 samples of 2 hours (above + 50 days)
797 samples of 1 day (above + 732 days, rounded up to 797)

rrdtool create myrouter.rrd \
            DS:input:COUNTER:600:U:U \
            DS:output:COUNTER:600:U:U \
            RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:600 \
            RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:6:700 \
            RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:24:775 \
            RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:288:797 \
            RRA:MAX:0.5:1:600 \
            RRA:MAX:0.5:6:700 \
            RRA:MAX:0.5:24:775 \
            RRA:MAX:0.5:288:797