Storing time-series data, relational or non?

Question

I am creating a system which polls devices for data on varying metrics such as CPU utilisation, disk utilisation, temperature etc. at (probably) 5 minute intervals using SNM

Answer 1

If you are looking at GPL packages, RRDTool is a good one to look at. It is a good tool for storing, extracting and graphing times-series data. Your use-case looks exactly like time-series data.