Monitoring tools with pretty graphs.

[reddragdiva]

We need a system and network monitoring tool that generates graphs that are (a) useful to us the drones but (b) pretty to show The Mgt. I know there are any number of monitoring things that generate PNGs in real time. What do you use?

Wikimedia uses Ganglia, which generates just the sort of thing we're after, but the description of the application looks a little heavyweight for under ten Solaris boxes. Of course, I'd be happy to hear that this was not the case.

Update: We also need to check stuff like number of users on Oracle, but that should be a simple check every five minutes, assuming it can log arbitrary data.

Comments

[wyrdrune.livejournal.com]

[Network Diagram]
Looks interesting - I use Network Notepad to do pretty piccies for Manglement - if I can dig out the latest I'll stick it somewhere and drop you a note with the URL.

one of the downsides to being a developer

I notice from your LJ userinfo that you're a perl hacker? I'm starting to learn perl - just basic stuff like reordering text files, accessing DBI and a little bit of CGI. I'm finding it fun (which is worrying I suppose). I used to be a DB developer before moving to networks, so I understand the compunction to "roll it yourself". :-)

purchasing freeze

Oh don't. I have been trying for two years to get some sort of UPS backup beyond an old, and out of date, APC desktop unit, for our servers. "It's not cost effective", "we can't justify it"... We had a power outage late last week. That made the point. I've got a chap coming round on Friday to talk generator & UPS solutions! :-)

Air con? For the server room? Why? "Because it's so damn hot in there that things have stopped pushing packets" to which I get told "so open a window"... In the height of summer... I now *have* air con and find myself popular in the summer! :-)

But enough of this ranting in RDD's journal! :-)

One of these days I'll have a rant in the SDM again.

(I'll add you to my work ranting journal BTW).