[rrd-users] Front-end suggestions ?

[James Schnack]

Hi,

I've been using MRTG for a while for some simple monitoring graphs. I've 
been playing a bit with rrdtool (great tool!) and reading a lot of the 
documentation, and I'm looking into it to create a set of scripts and/or 
config files to monitor a few Unix server with specific applications.

I've already decided to use rrdtool, due to its flexibility (CDEFs, 
different graphs, etc.), for this little project of mine.

I'm not so sure I will have the time to write code for the front-end (HTML 
page generation, etc.). So I looked into the front-ends listed under "RRD 
World" in rrdtool's web site. And I'm not sure which of those, if any, is 
the right one for me, so I'd appreciate if anybody with more experience in 
this area can share some of his/her opinions.

My requirements would be:

a) be able to use the *full* graphing flexibility of rrdtool (CDEFs, lines, 
areas, stacks, INF, etc.);
b) have alarming capabilities: trigger the sending of emails (or execution 
of external scripts) when acquired data goes over/under preset thresholds.

I wouldn't mind just having simple HTML pages and generate them with rrdcgi, 
but I'm not sure I could tackle the job of generating my own alarming code 
(I'm just a basic-level Perl programmer). Surely I would not make it 
efficient, if I could manage to do it at all...  ;-)

So, I'll round it up:

1) With those two requirements in mind, do you recommend any of the 
available front-ends ? Which would be the best ? Pros / cons ? Real-world 
experiences ?

2) Should I just go for a "pure" rrdtool implementation and use rrdcgi ? Any 
easy way that you can think of to add alarming capabilities to that setup ?

And last of all:

3) How many data sources should I stash into each RRD ? What's "common use" 
? I will be monitoring OS parameters (load, memory, disk usage, interface 
utilization, etc.) for 3 Unix servers, plus a bunch of application specific 
parameters. Should I create one RRD per server, one RRD per parameter and 
server, or what ? Pros / cons ? Any performance considerations to keep in 
mind ?

I'm sorry about the avalanche of questions, but I'm taking my first steps 
with this tool and any help will be welcome!

TIA!

James




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