Remstats An RRDtool-based Network Monitoring System by Thomas Erskine

Remstats

An RRDtool-based Network Monitoring System

by Thomas Erskine <thomas.erskine@crc.ca>

Why another network monitoring system?

• The existing ones were either:– inadequate, and/or– extremely expensive, and/or– not customizable enough

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What did you want?

• graphs and long-term data-storage like MRTG and RRDtool

• alerts and status-levels like NOCOL• data from non-SNMP sources

What’s so great about it?

• RRDtool (thank-you Tobi)• good customizable graphs• long-term data retention in small

space• fast updates

Seriously.

• non-SNMP data collection• “At a glance” web-pages for each

host• custom web-pages with live data• custom images with live data• long-term event logs

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Decoupling the collector

• use other data-sources, anything you’ve got

• write your own “collector”• how about a sed script?

OK. How does it work?

• Collectors feed a standard data format to the updater

• all the collectors run in parallel• afterwards monitors do data-

specific stuff • finally the web-pages get

generated

Enough! What does it look like?

• I’m glad you asked. Let’s have a look…

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How do I make it do all that?

• A single configuration file• Sections for graphtimes, colors, archives,

tools, scripts, alerts, oids, rrds and hosts• configuration base supplied• configuration-creation tools for some collectors

(ping, snmp and port)

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Where do I get it?

• Remstats: http://silverlock.dgim.crc.ca/~terskine/remstats

• RRDtool: http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/

• Perl and Co: http://www.cpan.org/

The End

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[ times ]

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[ colors ]

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[ archives ]

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[ tools ]

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[ script NAME ]

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[ rrd ping ]

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[ rrd if-* ]

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[ host news.crc.ca]