Subject: Re: RRDtool
From: Christopher E. Brown (cbrown@woods.net)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2003 - 01:05:16 AKDT
On 17 Apr 2003, Damien Hull wrote:
> I was just playing around with snmp and MRTG the other day. I'm trying
> to monitor my UMLs. The two things I really need to monitor are network
> traffic and CPU usage.
>
> Should I be using RRDtool? Don't know anything about it.
>
> Have you guys checked out cricket? I've got it installed but I haven't
> done anything with it. It's kind of like MRTG but better. That's what
> I've been told anyway.
In the beginning there was OpenView and ClearVis and the many other
packages from the great software houses. But there was was evil in
these creations, for they were overly complex, and too costly for any
but a wealthy kingdom, and they did not provide both the pretty
pictures *and* the accurate stats that were in much demand.
To save the sanity (and pocket books) of weary admins everywhere
Oetiker created MRTG, and it was good.
But then there came unrest, and thus it was spake unto Oetiker "Why
must we only sample the in and the out on a fixed timescale and
averaging method?" and with the statement "Thou must create something
to free the admins from the silly limits of thy bastard perl
scripting!" echoing in the networks Oetiker saw it was time for
something new.
Thus RRDTool was born. Not limited to storing a simple pair of linked
values, but handling multitudes. No longer limited, but boundless,
with values, labels, scaling and storage methods all being user
defined on a per item basis.
But alas, while RRDTool was the great backend statistics storage and
parsing system there was no front to this back, for the great Oetiker
had not yet linked RRDTool to the MRTG of old, for MRTG was still
limited to only two values, and a fixed timescale.
And then, through the efforts of a few true admins, enslaved by the
great beasts that were AOL and WebTV, but not completely ground down
by those with the pointy hair came Cricket. And it was good, for
Cricket was MRTG reborn, with a scalable configurations tree, and the
ability to use all of the features of the great RRDTool, lending great
power to the keepers of complex statistics.
And in the fullness of time Oetiker produced a new MRTG, using the
power of RRDTool to provide more flexible timing and averaging within
the venerable MRTG, but still holding to the old ways of the in and
the out that are all the admins of simpler networks need.
And thus we have two great stats packages, both driven by the engine
that is RRDTool. MRTG, for those admins that only need tracking of
the in, and the out. And Cricket, for those who need dynamic tracking
of things more complex than the in and the out, and those who must
monitor many hundreds or thousands of ports, and benefit greatly from
the configuration trees of Cricket.
-- I route, therefore you are.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Sun Apr 20 2003 - 01:03:52 AKDT