Skip to content
Search

RRDtool

lastmod 2024-12-05created 2024-12-053 edits

RRDtool (round-robin database tool) is a tool for handling data over time. It can also visualize the data as graphs.

It was developed by imitating and generalizing MRTG. Some of the data collection parts are missing, so it is not a complete replacement, but it is a very popular tool in the network monitoring field.

Supports Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, and PHP.

It basically runs on Unix/Linux, but some versions are also available for Windows. Officially, only source code is distributed, without binaries.

About

The homepage describes RRDtool as "the industry-standard open-source logging/graphing tool for storing time-based data." It is the archetypal TSDB. Simply put, it is a tool for efficiently managing and displaying data that accumulates over time, such as "the amount of received/sent data".

  • RRDtool was created by Tobi Oetiker, who made MRTG. So MRTG data can also be logged and graphed with RRDtool.
  • Using RRDtool broadly consists of the following steps.
    • Define the data to store and decide how to collect it
    • Create an RRD file with RRDtool
    • Update the data periodically with RRDtool
    • Generate graphs periodically with RRDtool
  • Compared with 1.2, RRDtool 1.4 uses a cache daemon to reduce frequent I/O, and the Cairo and Pango libraries for better-looking graphs. RRDtool 1.4 can also be used on Solaris 10 by installing from source, but this is not recommended.
  • It is the de facto 'standard' tool and has substantial features as a time-period-based data collection and graphing tool. The files it uses to store data are quite small, it runs fast, and it is distributed under the GPLv2 license, so there are few restrictions on its use.
  • NMSs that use RRDtool include Cacti, collectd, and Munin. Personally, I wondered why NMS projects did not build their own graphing tools, and writing this page answered much of that question. Many open-source NMS projects use RRDtool to store data and draw graphs.
  • Besides RRDtool, well-known TSDBs include OpenTSDB, InfluxData, and ElasticSearch.

Round Robin Database

Round Robin Database (RRD) was created by Tobias Oetiker and is now open-source software developed with the participation of many people around the world. Round Robin is a technique that works with a fixed size of data and a pointer to the current element; when the current data is read or written, the pointer moves to the next element. Like a circle with no beginning or end, the Round Robin technique lets you keep reading and writing data. All available positions can be used during operation, and previous positions are reused automatically. In this way the database does not grow in size, yet stays usable without any manual work.

RRDTool implements a database using this Round Robin technique and can store and retrieve data. To add to this, RRDTool is a database useful for handling measurement data at specific points over a fixed period. RRDTool originated from MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher). MRTG is a tool that stores information on internet line usage collected via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and draws graphs of the collected data with scripts. By comparison, RRDTool is known as a tool that collects and stores more general measurement data, such as current temperature, speed, and voltage, and draws graphs of it. RRDTool basically creates databases, stores data, retrieves data, and draws the average and maximum usage of a line as GIR/PNG graphs.

The last updated version, rrdtool-1.4.8, was released on March 23, 2013.

See also

  • Cacti - An open-source, web-based network monitoring, performance, fault, and configuration management framework designed as a front-end application for RRDtool, the open-source, industry-standard data logging tool.
  • collectd - The system statistics collection daemon
  • Munin
  • Time series database

Favorite site

author Zer0 sitemap