A consolidation permits to generate a new metric in aggregating a set of metrics and in crushing aggregated values in one final metric.

An example of consolidation is drawn in the following figure.

Four graphs are represented vertically, separated by an horizontal dotted line: "metric 1", "aggregation 1", "aggregation 2" and "consolidation".

All graphs provide values where the abscissa axis is in time, and ordinate in the same arbitrary unit.

The two intervals [t0; t1[ and [t1; t2[ are defined with the same duration and the last interval [t2; now] is less longer than previous ones.

Finally, there are aggregation operations between the "metric 1" and "aggregation 1" graphs and [consolidation operations](# aggregation and consolidation) between the both aggregations graphs and the consolidation graph.

Let's see how aggregation and consolidation works.

An aggregation is a function which takes in parameter one metric, one aggregation operation and one aggregation interval.

The aggregation process starts to group metric values which are in the same aggregation interval (in the previous figure, the interval [t0; t1[ is composed of five values).

Then the aggregation operation is applied on each aggregation interval and it generates a new metric where values are positioned at the beginning of their aggregation interval (the result of values between t0 and t1 is at t0).

Let a metric related to a service sla, you can get the average sla per day in selecting the aggregation operation mean and an aggregation interval of one day.

A consolidation generates one metric from at least one aggregation and one consolidation operation.

The consolidation operation is applied for every aggregation values at the same position on the abscissa axis. It implies all aggregation must have the same aggregation interval.

Let five aggregations A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5 which are respectively mean per day of sla of all services of one server "S". You can get the general mean per day of S sla in applying the consolidation operation mean on all aggregations.

Here are the list of available operations for aggregations and consolidations

Select the first value.

Select the last value.

Select the minimal value.

Select the maximal value.

Select the mean value (sum(values) / count(values)).

Select the delta value (max(values) - min(values))

Select the sum value.