[mrtg] Re: Business Hours and 95%ile.

[René Møller]

Hi

I same problem (using RRDTool), that I want to see the averages etc
during daytime, but at the same time i want statistics (and graphs) for
the whole day. I use the dirty trick to make to identical rrd files. In
a perl script i collect the data, and feed the rrd's. The only
difference is that one of the rrd's is'nt fed with data at night time.
That way i have both statistics and graphs. And yes, it consumes some
diskspace and use some cpu, but that's not a big deal in my case. Very
fast and easy to set up. Maybe the same approach is worth considering
with mrtg?

/Rene Moeller



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul C. Williamson [mailto:pwilliamson at mandtbank.com] 
> Sent: 6. september 2001 22:36
> To: mrtg at list.ee.ethz.ch; Russ.Forthofer at ssfhs.org
> Subject: [mrtg] Re: Business Hours and 95%ile.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm trying to do something like this via the guidance of 
> Alex's FAQ for 
> RRDTool (http://faq.rrdtool.org) and getting quite 
> frustrated.  I don't 
> want to ignore what goes on at night.  But the problem is 
> that I don't 
> want to count the night time "unused" bandwidth.  It's not like my 
> company will tell people to work at night instead of during the day 
> just to even out the bandwidth usage.  I still want to track 
> it, but I 
> want to be able to provide a cgi for looking at just the "business 
> hour" usage, versus the 24 hour usage.  Just last week we found 
> a disgruntled user transmitting rather large data files from 
> our site without 
> his manger's permission.  Upon my suggestion, they monitored what was 
> sent out.  Fired the next day.  Now I feel bad, but not as 
> bad as if thisp  eron would have been successful in what they 
> were trying to do.
> 
> Anyone want to collaborate?
> 
> Paul
> 
> >>> Forthofer Russ <Russ.Forthofer at ssfhs.org> 09/06/01 04:22PM >>>
> 
> Jay:
> You are probably right that the "business hours only" is not 
> for everyone. I would agree that in using MRTG to look for 
> anomalies in utilization you want to look at the whole day.  
> However, IMHO, there are some cases where it can be quite 
> helpful to look only at the business day.  For example, if a 
> line is used primarily during business hours, average 
> utilization across a 24-hour day is pretty meaningless.  
> Average utilization and 95th percentile utilization across 
> the business day, however, can be useful statistics, 
> especially in terms of gathering historical data and tracking 
> growth.  If the business day "average" is what is being 
> sought (in my case it is), then simply zeroing out the 
> non-business hours does not resolve the issue, as the zeroes 
> would skew the average. 
> 
> Russ
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay Hennigan [mailto:jay at west.net] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 2:25 PM
> To: Mark Pugh
> Cc: mrtg at list.ee.ethz.ch 
> Subject: [mrtg] Re: Business Hours and 95%ile.
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 6 Sep 2001, Mark Pugh wrote:
> 
> > I'm currently using MRTG, RRD, and 14all to monitor all my border 
> > routers
> for bandwidth usage.  I'd like to be able to customize the 
> data collection and/or reporting to get a business hours 
> (8-5) usage graph and a weekly 95%ile usage graph.  Are there 
> any suggestions?  I've done very little PERL work before, but 
> can usually manage my way through scripts.  Any help would be 
> appreciated.
> 
> An excellent 95th percentile package is available from
> 
http://www.seanadams.com/95/ 

As far as business hours, I'm not sure what you're trying to do.  If
you're calling MRTG from cron, you can edit the crontab to only run it
during business hours.  You'll probably want the unknown-as-zero switch
set in your config file.

IMHO, the business hours idea doesn't seem like a good one for most
people. DOS attacks, viruses, etc. often occur and cause unusual traffic
patterns at all hours.  Generally, it's good to know about such things.
Perhaps RRD can generate the daily graph with specified begin and end
times?

-- 
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay at west.net 
NetLojix Communications, Inc.  -  http://www.netlojix.com/ 
WestNet:  Connecting you to the planet.  805 884-6323


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