RRDtool (round-robin database tool) aims to handle time series data such as network bandwidth, temperatures or CPU load. The data is stored in a circular buffer based database, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time.

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Quick Facts Original author(s), Initial release ...

RRDtool

Original author(s)	Tobias Oetiker
Initial release	July 16, 1999; 24 years ago (1999-07-16)
Stable release	1.8.0 / 2022-03-13[1]
Repository	github.com/oetiker/rrdtool-1.x
Written in	C
License	GNU General Public License
Website	oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/

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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, Python, Ruby, Tcl, PHP and Lua. There is an independent full Java implementation called rrd4j.

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, 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.

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

• RRD Editor
• Time series database