Data Source templates

Data Source templates describe the data that Cacti is going to store in the RRD files. This basically comes down to the RRDtool create command. Having a template for this ensures that RRD files for a specific set of data sources are always created in a common way. It is within the data source templates where you decide to poll every five minutes or in a more frequent polling interval.

Please note that once a data template is being used to create an RRD file, changes to the data template will not be reflected on that RRD file.

Data Source templates are either based on data queries or data input methods. So, let's look what these are.