u/swdevtest

Many performance metrics and system parameters are inherently volatile or fluctuate rapidly. When using a monitoring system that periodically “scrapes” (polls) a target for its current metric value, the collected data point is merely a snapshot of the system’s state at that precise moment. It doesn’t reveal much about what’s actually happening in that area. Sometimes it’s possible to overcome this problem by accumulating those values somehow – for example, by using histograms or exporting a derived monotonically increasing counter. This article suggests yet another way to extend this approach for a broader set of frequently changing parameters.