Product: collectd
Monday, December 31, 2007 at 12:24AM From http://directory.fsf.org/project/collectd/ :
'collectd' is a small daemon which collects system information every 10 seconds and writes the results in an RRD-file. The statistics gathered include: CPU and memory usage, system load, network latency (ping), network interface traffic, and system temperatures (using lm-sensors), and disk usage. 'collectd' is not a script; it is written in C for performance and portability. It stays in the memory so there is no need to start up a heavy interpreter every time new values should be logged.
From the collectd website:
Collectd gathers information about the system it is running on and stores this information. The information can then be used to do find current performance bottlenecks (i. e. performance analysis) and predict future system load (i. e. capacity planning). Or if you just want pretty graphs of your private server and are fed up with some homegrown solution you're at the right place, too ;).
While collectd can do a lot for you and your administrative needs, there are limits to what it does:
* It does not generate graphs. It can write to RRD-files, but it cannot generate graphs from these files. There's a tiny sample script included in contrib/, though. Also you can have a look at drraw for a generic solution to generate graphs from RRD-files.
* It does not do monitoring. The data is collected and stored, but not interpreted and acted upon. There's a plugin for Nagios, so it can use the values collected by collectd, though.
It's reportedly a reliable product that doesn't cause a lot load on your system. This enables you to collect data at a faster rate so you can detect problems earlier.
Reader Comments (4)
Not sure if anyone here knows Zabbix. It's rock solid, cross-platform, feature-rich and opensource/free.
Used Nagios some time ago, but after I discovered Zabbix, I don't even want to look elsewhere.
collectd shows a lot of promise, and I like a few features:
- multi/uni-cast communications
- auto-discovery (via multicast)
- looks pretty straightforward to plugins built
(all of which are also found in ganglia, which is my favorite at the moment)
I also applaud collectd for attempting to do one thing well: collecting and storing system metrics.
Threshold checks, alerting, escalations, etc. should be left to other tools better suited for the job, like nagios.
IMHO, tools that try to do all forms of monitoring always lack in one or the other, and I'd suggest that the term 'monitoring' be clarified when talking about these things:
http://www.kitchensoap.com/2007/09/26/the-term-monitoring-needs-clarification/
Your link to their page is broke. You have a : at the end.
p.s. might want to note next to the captcha that its case sensitive.
Not sure if anyone here knows Zabbix. It's rock solid, cross-platform, feature-rich and opensource/free.
Used Nagios some time ago, but after I discovered Zabbix, I don't even want to look elsewhere.