Need to Monitor Multiple Servers

Hi,

I need to monitor CPU, Memory and Physical disk I/O on about 160 servers for a 3 month period with the monitoring occuring at about 10 minute intervals. The machines are split across 2 datacenters and i'm trying to figure the best way to do this.

Currently looking at using perfmon on a single machine in each DC and collecting stats from all the others into a single csv file. I can then give this to the guys who need the info to see how much some of our servers are used. This looks like a pretty manual process even if i try and script it a bit using logman.

Are there any better ways to do this or better tools avaialble that anyone knows about?

Thanks
Ben

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Comments

paintb4707

I'm a fan of PRTG

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nel

nagios or cacti maybe?

i know for cacti there is a cd with pre-installs the entire environment from scratch automatically so you dont require any input. i think its ran on centos or something. However i have not used this cd so dont know how good it is.

PTRG is good too but you have to pay to monitor over 10 objects.

Does it have to be free or is money available?

bencairney

nel wrote:

nagios or cacti maybe?

i know for cacti there is a cd with pre-installs the entire environment from scratch automatically so you dont require any input. i think its ran on centos or something. However i have not used this cd so dont know how good it is.

PTRG is good too but you have to pay to monitor over 10 objects.

Does it have to be free or is money available?

Probably Free but i'll check. They need it started asap so I'll maybe have to start with perfmon at least as it takes ages for us to get any king of purchase authorised.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll have a look at these.

arwes

Here's something you may want to check out if you don't mind running it on Linux or CentOS. It's basically a modified Nagios:

http://www.opsview.org/

120nm4n

+1 for Nagios. We use it to monitor everything.

bencairney

arwes wrote:

Here's something you may want to check out if you don't mind running it on Linux or CentOS. It's basically a modified Nagios:

http://www.opsview.org/

That looks a cool util, don't have any Linux machines just now unfortunatley.

Nagios looks good, i'll have a go with that.

Thanks again for all the replies.

nel

Not to get side tracked but what OS does most of us run nagios on?

Ahriakin

I'd definitely go with OpsView , all the versatility of Nagios without the learning curve (and better data retention/reporting). Even if you can load VMWare on a server and run it from there. Easiest install is Ubuntu Server and then use the Debian setup, you wouldn't need any real Linux knowledge, just follow the instructions on the Opsview site (and install Ubuntu Server with the LAMP and OPENSSH Server options)
The only decent Win32 based system I've used is Hyperic, also very good but it lacks templates on the free version so making across the board changes means doing so on each and every host.

Nel, I like to use Debian based distros, APT is just such a cool software manager and most app.s are available in .deb format at least.

dynamik

You use Mint at all?

nel

Ahriakin wrote:

I'd definitely go with OpsView , all the versatility of Nagios without the learning curve (and better data retention/reporting). Even if you can load VMWare on a server and run it from there. Easiest install is Ubuntu Server and then use the Debian setup, you wouldn't need any real Linux knowledge, just follow the instructions on the Opsview site (and install Ubuntu Server with the LAMP and OPENSSH Server options)
The only decent Win32 based system I've used is Hyperic, also very good but it lacks templates on the free version so making across the board changes means doing so on each and every host.

Nel, I like to use Debian based distros, APT is just such a cool software manager and most app.s are available in .deb format at least.

Thanks man. i'll try that out and take a look at opsview too

arwes

The Opsview guys have a virtual appliance you can play with as well, just load it up in VMware Player. I've got some Linux experience, but I went with one of the Ubuntu LTS distros as my boss is more comfortable with a GUI. So very easy to get Opsview running with the Debian package.

rfult001

nel wrote:

Not to get side tracked but what OS does most of us run nagios on?

I think they are running it on CentOS here at work. But they are switching over to GroundWork (http://www.groundworkopensource.com/), which is also a modified Nagios that uses a MySQL back-end. (Also on CentOS)

120nm4n

nel wrote:

Not to get side tracked but what OS does most of us run nagios on?

We run it on two Ubuntu servers.