Right now, we're using a combination of mon with HP-OV to cover
monitorization. I'm looking into RRDTool for reporting.
After spending a couple of years studying the topic, I've finally found it
useful to separate (mentally) the task of monitoring state from the task of
measuring performance. Basically, what you're asking are two different
questions:
* Is my system OK right now? (fundamentally a yes/no question, although
there are many degrees of "yes, but...") This is monitorization of state.
Tools such as Tivoli, HP-OV, mon, Big Brother, etc. focus on answering this
question.
* How is my system performing overall? (well, poorly, sometimes better
than other times, etc.) This is monitorization of performance over time,
usually shown in graphs. Tools such as MRTG and RRDTool focus on answering
this question.
Of course, the lines blur, especially when you talk of what different
products provide -- the answer to the second question can determine the
answer to the first. Tools such as MRTG provide limited threshold checking
and notification, but they are no substitute for a full-featured monitoring
system, such as mon. On the other hand, tools such as mon can be adapted to
save state information for reporting purposes (with modules such as rrdmon),
but they're no substitute for reporting tools such as RRDTool.
So far, I haven't found a reasonably-priced (or freeware) package that does
it all to my taste. Tivoli and HP-OV come close, but they still are focused
more on the first question, rather than on the second. There's the OpenNMS
project (http://www.opennms.org/), an open source freeware alternative to
tools such as HP-OV, but as far as I can tell, it's not really ready for
primetime yet.
So, like most, I use a combination of tools to give me the big picture. As
another person pointed out, it's a pain in the neck to have to configure
several pieces of software to send multiple queries just to get data on one
element -- you usually end up cobbling together a series of management
scripts to tie it all together. But as the two tasks (checking state and
measuring performance) are fundamentally two different tasks, albeit very
closely related, I prefer to work with tools optimized to perform either one
or the other.
Mon is an excellent monitoring tool, as it was designed to be; that doesn't
necessarily make it an excellent tool for measuring performance, however.
I'd prefer that core development of mon continue in the direction of
monitoring state and sending notifications, and leave the task of graphing,
reports, etc. to other tools.
my two cents...
Scott Prater
Dpto. Sistemas
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
SERVICOM 2000
Av. Primado Reig, 189 entlo.
46020 Valencia - Spain
Tel. (+34) 96 332 12 00
Fax. (+34) 96 332 12 01
www.servicom2000.com
-----Mensaje original-----
De: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]En
nombre de Dick de Waal
Enviado el: jueves, 27 de septiembre de 2001 22:59
Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Asunto: New idea / database question....
Hello All!
Did anybody put the monitoring (performance) data from divers monitoring
scripts
into a database (like postgresql) for further analysing/reporting??
Up- and downtimes are not enough for me, and want to store also the SNMP
(cpu, disk, process, etc),
HTTP respons, etc data
in this database to create service level reports... or even, because the
data is then realtime available, do some
pro-active SLA monitoring!!!
(retrieving is somehow already done for the monitoring part.... and after
comparing in the monitoring scripts,
this data is trown away...but is just usefull...!!)
Has anybody some idea's/scripts or wanna have a beta/alpha/stable-tester????
I'm now using the latest version and _of course_ running well again!!
Even for my test setup on a Sony Vaio laptop....
greeetzz
dick
<>
(not realy a perl programmer..........)
