2021-03-01
Updating my statistics gathering
For years and years I have been using rrdtool to gather and graph statistics at home. I started gathering home temperatures around 2008 but I see NTP statistics gathering from 2003 and my last mrtg graphs were created in October 2002. So that suggests I've been using rrdtool since that date. Anyway, I'm looking at newer options. After some asking around I installed influxdb and started gathering data. I adjusted some of my data gathering scripts around rrdtool to also put the data in influxdb. The easiest data to gather and graph was the load average, available entropy and number of processes for a number of systems at home. So that dashboard has been built and allows selection of the wanted computer. My first conclusion is just collecting data and thinking what kind of graphs to create later is a lot easier with influxdb. With rrdtool the round robin database is designed around the graphs you want. In this case I just start gathering data and when data has come in start playing with possible graphs from that data. The next challenge is to set the rules for maintaining the old data. One of the triggers to look at other options was that I was at the end of a nearly 11-year cycle of stored temperatures in rrdtool, and I wanted to keep that history if possible. I don't have to keep every measurement forever, but with storage being cheap I think I will keep daily averages forever when this is 'production'.
