Collectd: RRD alternative

Question

RRD is the default storage medium. But it is architecture-dependent (arm, x86, x64) - RRD files created from one architecture can't be read, without convertion, by another architecture. Therefore I would like to seek for alternative.

However one great benefit of RRD is the fixed size - the old data is being removed if new data is coming in. Is there a fixed size, architecture-independent, collectd-supported medium?

I am running collectd 5.1.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

As far as I know there is currently no drop-in replacement for the rrdtool write plugin. That being said, there are a number of other write plugins which can achieve your requirement. Have a look at the table of plugins on the collectd wiki. I'm thinking about carbon, graphite, mongodb or likewise which are based upon some sort of database backend, which can most likely be set up to be trimmed periodically, thus preventing the endless growth of used disk space.

Moreover, if you are patient, the 1.5 branch of rrdtool should implement an architecture independent format (version 0005), you might checkout github to find hints on whether this is being worked on right now, or else ask Tobias Oetiker for a roadmap.