[mrtg] RunAsDaemon vs. cron job

[Michael Silver]

Hello,

Another newbie question...

I want to use MRTG to track traffic patterns on 51 devices, most having
6 interfaces I want to monitor. That brings us up to ~612 queries (51
devices x 6 interfaces x 2 counters) assuming worst case scenarios. The
machine running MRTG runs two other services - Nagios and Request
Tracker. The 15 min. load averages running those services plus
monitoring 3 of the above devices runs around 0.02 with 1 min. spikes as
high as 0.50.

Given those loads, I don't think the server is going to have issues with
the added snmp traffic. Still, I would like to set up MRTG to be
reasonable in terms of its resources. As I see it, I could divide my
devices into 5 groups, each with their own cfg file, so I can stagger
the mrtg load across 5 minutes using cron, or I could run one big cfg
file using RunAsDaemon. (I guess I could run one big file and cron, but
I don't see the point in that.) 

Does anyone have any recommendations or experiences with this before I
shoot myself in the foot by not seeing the obvious? I gotta admit, I'm
leaning towards 5 groups and cron right now.

Thanks for any pointers or advice.

Michael

Michael Silver, Network Administrator 
Parkland Regional Library 
5404 56 Avenue Lacombe, AB T4L 1G1 
Phone: 403.782.3850    Fax: 403.782.4650
http://www.prl.ab.ca/  msilver at prl.ab.ca