Opt for collecting metrics at least every 60 seconds. If you have a high-traffic system, opt for more often, such as every 30 seconds or even every 10 seconds. Some people have argued that collecting metrics more often places too much load on the system, which I call baloney. Modern servers and network gear have very high performance and can easily handle the minuscule load more monitoring will place on them. Of course, keeping high-granularity metrics around on disk for a long period of time can get expensive. You probably don’t need to store a year of CPU metric data at 10-second granularity. Make sure you configure a roll-up period that makes sense for your metrics.303 ↱
Practical Monitoring
Effective Strategies for the Real World
Mike Julian