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Why not MRTG , rrdtool, <insert favourite tool here>?

MRTG is a fine tool and I recommend it wholeheartedly. In the past I have implemented basic monitoring on a number of systems using MRTG. People are generally satisfied with the data and it takes very little effort to setup and manage.

I haven’t directly setup rrdtool but have it running under hobbit (a highly recommended operations management tool) and am very happy with the results of both. Rrdtool expands on the idea of MRTG by adding more data, better graphing, and better performance.

Why aren’t I happy with these tools? For my purposes both are based on some assumptions about data use that I don’t like for some situations:

Having said that, both are much easier to set up and manage than the FreePDB suite of programs. If all you need are some nice graphs to keep everyone happy and don’t have time to invest in managing a full Performance Database then you should give them a try.