Data precision

[Francisco Reyes]

Is there any way to have a different precision from the current defaults?

The existing setup
Last Seconds Snapshot
Last Hour 1 Minute
Last Day 15 Minutes
Last Week 2 Hours
Last Month 12 Hours
Last Six Months 1 Day
Last Year 7 Days
Last Three Years 14 Days

Is not effective for instances were there is mostly a very steady stream 
of usage and then there are spikes.

The averages completely and totally hide what would be extremely 
valuable information.

Today I had a system crash.
I got to the machine within the hour.
Apache had a peak of 90+ instances and it was steady at 80+ until the 
machine crashed.
Looking at the hour stats showed the issue..

Now several hours later looking at the day stat it is showing the peak 
as 63.. If I switch to week it shows 20.  We haven't had mmonit for a 
month, but I am sure it will be near useless in the month graph.

The existing algorithm and retention policies may save space, but make 
mmonit to be significantly less effective for cases of constant load 
with sporadic spikes. The averaging completely hides the spikes.

I would far rather throw the data in Postgresql.. or have  just a few 
months of retention... than to have the current scenario which makes 
stats, for this particular scenario, useless after a single day.