RRDtool (round-robin database tool) aims to handle time series data such as network bandwidth, temperatures or CPU load.

The data is stored in a circular buffer based database, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time.

A round-robin archive stores a fixed number of CDPs and specifies how many PDPs should be consolidated into one CDP and which CF to use.

However this is different from the common computer science definition, which is a method of distributing resources among multiple consumers or processes.

The data retrieval function of RRDtool automatically selects the archive with the highest resolution that still covers the requested timespan.