Most management and analytics platforms collect performance metrics at regular intervals, typically every 5 minutes and more. While this can provide a general overview of system performance, it may not capture short performance spikes or issues that occur between the different data collection cycles.
In the fast-paced world of computing, collecting a single data point every five minutes may not give an accurate picture of what happened during that time. As a result, administrators who are trying to troubleshoot an issue, are not going to be equipped with the required data to pinpoint the actual root cause.
This is why VMware Aria Operations collects performance data every 20 seconds and averages those values over five minutes. This ensures that even spikes that happen during the five-minute window are captured, providing a more complete picture of system performance. As VMware Aria Operations Cloud users, there is an option for you to enable near real-time metric collection with a retention of three days.
The importance of the 20-second metric collection cannot be overstated, as it enables IT administrators to quickly identify and resolve performance issues, to mainly improve application performance and reduce downtime.