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01-24-2007, 01:53 AM #1Web Hosting Master
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95th percentile billing polling interval.
Why do seemingly most companies do 95th percentile billing based on a 5 minute polling interval?
Do you think there would be any complaints about basing 95th percentile billing on a 1 minute polling interval?
Thanks.
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01-24-2007, 05:05 AM #2Web Hosting Master
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Alot of carriers have defined their polling interval as 5 minutes in their contract.
1 minute interval will give a more accurate usage level, but it is also harder on the system when there are a large number of devices being monitored.http://Ethr.net jay@ethr.net
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01-24-2007, 08:18 AM #3Web Hosting Master
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5 minutes seems to be the standard, however we use 1 minute for our customers.
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01-24-2007, 08:26 AM #4Aspiring Evangelist
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On another note, anyone know off hand if it's easy to modify cacti to use the same interval (i.e. 5 mins) for all graphs (daily, weekly, monthly etc)?
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01-24-2007, 09:39 AM #5Account Suspended
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'Do you think there would be any complaints about basing 95th percentile billing on a 1 minute polling interval?'
Not as long as you still tossed out the top 5% of the data when calculating the invoice
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01-24-2007, 10:08 AM #6Managed Hosting Expert
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We're using 30s, monitoring about 200 switch ports on a single Xeon 3.0 w/512mb, it's coping fine.
It does annoy me when providers use the 5 minute model because small traffic spikes can look like they lasted a lot longer than they did and cost you more money.
Dan█ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
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01-24-2007, 11:54 AM #7Web Hosting Master
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Isn't it worse with 1 minute intervals? If you have a big burst for (say) 30 seconds, this is averaged out over 5 minutes normally, so you pay for a lower amount of bandwidth. With 1 minute intervals, it would be averaged out over 1 minute.
Yeah, it's more accurate, but it's also more expensive
I don't pretend to be an expert on this though.Robin Balen
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01-24-2007, 12:15 PM #8CISSP-ISSMP, CISA
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Originally Posted by robinbalen
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01-24-2007, 12:27 PM #9Managed Hosting Expert
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Originally Posted by robinbalen
I could be wrong though.
Dan█ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
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01-24-2007, 01:05 PM #10Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by RazorBlue - Dan
In that regard, using shorter polling cycles almost always produces higher values for 95% billing. Say I have a magical test case application that bursts to 100% of port speed for 1 minute out of every 5. On a 1 minute polling cycle those 100% bursts will be happening 20% of the time (overall) so my 95% utilization graph will show 100% of port speed. On a 5 minute polling cycle, however, my utilization will consistently be 20% of port speed. (100% usage for 1 of 5 minutes, averaged over the whole 5 minute period)
I think the best solution to this problem is to match the polling interval that your upstream providers are billing you at. Either that, or take your data from more frequent polling and average it out to the polling interval of the upstream. I believe that produces the fairest billing data for all parties.Eric Spaeth
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01-24-2007, 01:20 PM #11Web Hosting Master
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Yep. What Eric has described is how I understand it to work. As you reduce the polling period (e.g. from 5 minutes to 1 minute) you will almost certainly increase the 95%tile value. Unless of course your usage is very constant, in which case there won't be any difference.
Robin Balen
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01-24-2007, 01:50 PM #12Web Hosting Master
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I concur with Robin and Eric. 95th is generally calculated as:
delta_in / sample_period_in_seconds
or
delta_out / sample_period_in_seconds
So a smaller sample period, will result in higher peaks if the traffic was sustained for <smaller sample period or less>Karl Austin :: KDAWS.com
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01-24-2007, 04:27 PM #13Managed Hosting Expert
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Interesting, never really thought about it in depth but that does make sense. Thanks.
Dan█ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
█ ddi: (+44) (0)1748 900 680 | e: dkitchen@razorblue.com
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01-24-2007, 04:48 PM #14Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by RazorBlue - Dan
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01-25-2007, 01:35 AM #15Junior Guru
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Originally Posted by RazorBlue - Dan
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01-25-2007, 09:19 AM #16Web Hosting Evangelist
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Well you don't necessarily cut off all the peaks, just those sustained for short periods of time that don't occur regularly. 95th is great, but even being around it for years, I still get mixed up as Dan, so I wouldn't go below the gut just yet I'd say that matching the polling rate with your upstream is the best bet for the most accurate readings. As far as not using RazorBlue, attroll you'd be missing alot of redundancy and 24/7 support/management. But thats just my .02
Jordan
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01-25-2007, 10:06 PM #17Managed Hosting Expert
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Originally Posted by attroll
Dan█ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
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█ UK Intensive Managed Hosting, Clusters and Colocation.
█ HP Servers, Cisco/Juniper Powered BGP Network (AS15692).
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01-26-2007, 10:14 AM #18Web Hosting Evangelist
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Originally Posted by nitrohosting
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01-26-2007, 10:41 AM #19Newbie
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Right, a 5 minute polling is more cost effective on you, and 1 minute is more money for the provider, so defiitely don't go after 1 minute polling.
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01-26-2007, 05:31 PM #20PHP for breakfast
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Wouldn't it be 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of another? Remember, if you poll every minute as opposed to every 5 minutes, you have 5 times the data stored, so your top 5% is 5 times larger.
If you do 1mbps average every 5 minutes, or 1 minute of 5mbps and 4 of next to nothing, you will actually be billed LESS on 1 minute polling as your 5mbps minutes would likely be struck in the now 5 times larger top 5%.
Sure, 5 minute polling may give you some extra leway to hide extra usage, but 1 minute polling gives you extra reinforcement of non-usage. I think it cuts pretty much either way, though it'd be interesting to see both 1 and 5 minute polling calculations from the same data. I really would bet you'd find some where 1 minute was better, some where it didn't matter, and some where 5 minute was better.Jacob - WebOnce Technologies - 30 Day 100% Satisfaction Guarantee - Over 5 Years Going Strong!
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01-26-2007, 09:09 PM #21Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by WO-Jacob
Originally Posted by WO-Jacob
Originally Posted by WO-JacobEric Spaeth
Enterprise Network Engineer :: Hosting Hobbyist :: Master of Procrastination
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01-26-2007, 09:30 PM #22Managed Hosting Expert
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Originally Posted by WO-Jacob
I'll post once it's been running long enough to give some reasonable results.
Dan█ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
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01-27-2007, 01:28 AM #23Web Hosting Evangelist
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Hehe, I'm interested to see this. Thanks for volunteering Dan
Jordan
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01-29-2007, 07:36 PM #24Web Hosting Evangelist
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Here are some pictures, we have both a 5 minute average and a 1 minute average here. The graph is just over a week right now, but if you want more data, I can get more data.
Below is the text 1 minute 95th billing. The 5 minute is on the graph. It is 6.69 for the 1 minute and 7.45 on the five minute.
2/3 colo0127 houdc01ed01.zogmo.com 3.57 0.14 12.53 0.52 6.69 0.24
Well the upload didn't take you can view them here.
http://www.zogmo.com/1minuteaverage.JPG
http://www.zogmo.com/5minuteaverage.JPG
Cheers,
LinnLinn Boyd
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01-30-2007, 01:43 AM #25Junior Guru
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After looking at those graphs I would say the customer would benefit from 5 minute intervals.