Perhaps "throw away" is the wrong phrasing. The aggregates are always averages, no absolute counts. After a rollup, the maximum of some value will no longer be the maximum - it'll be the average of a bunch of maximums. There's no type information with which one can maintain this, and no observation/sum counting. For 'data whore' people like you and I, this should matter. :) (or at least, it does to me)
The article seems to be about trying to get an approximation of observation count data out of Graphite, which doesn't really store that.
Re:Aggregating events in Graphite over time
by obfuscurity_ on Tuesday April 10, 2012 @10:47AM
(#3822374)
It seems to me that you're referring to a) other data outside of the scope of this example and b) the fact that Whisper uses average data for rollups. This is a valid issue and one of the reasons for the new Ceres format.
The metrics I demonstrate in the article do not rollup. If they did I'd completely lose the data. That's why I keep them at 1-sec resolution for their lifetime (generally 1 year). In hindsight it seems your original comment was a general critique of one aspect of Graphite and outside the scope of this particular article.
The example covers a particular metric use-case for annotation-style details, and how to extract a meaningful aggregate from what is otherwise contextual data. Personally I love that Graphite lets me "hack about" with multiple functions. But I'm a data whore, YMMV. ;-)