Cacti -vs- mrtg

[Howard Jones]

Jeff Mohler wrote:
> I can use MRTG, and have MRTG do what I want it to do.
>
> Id like to try cacti, but..am I alone in finding that it's a PITA?
>
> Im not trying to be negative, just looking for a reality check.
>
>
> I like the simplicity of mrtg, but I like the "go back in time" of
> cacti to view performance data.
>
>
> If its just a matter of a package that's not ready for Joe Public
> (thats me)..Id accept that.  :) 
I think it's more that there's more than one kind of Joe Public. If you 
want to present your graphs to your customers/users, or a subset to 
different users, or apply the same set of graphs to a number of 
different hosts, or make custom rrdtool graphs (stacks, additional graph 
elements), then Cacti will let you do that. If you just want a quick & 
dirty tool that's easy to configure for your handful of hosts, then MRTG 
is just the job.

We use both where I work, with Cacti for the bulk-graphing and customer 
facing stuff, and some MRTG where I just knocked up a quick perl script 
to measure something. Cacti has quite a nice plugin system, and 
importable templates from other users that you might be able to use to 
save yourself some time. I find getting my own templates working in 
Cacti to be a PITA too, though.

<shamelessplug>It also has some useful plugins, including a couple of my 
own. The main one of those being PHP Network Weathermap 
(http://wotsit.thingy.com/haj/cacti/) which will work with both MRTG and 
Cacti, to produce graphical overviews of your network.</shamelessplug>

Bear in mind there are also other tools out there in the MRTG/Cacti 
space: DVG, NRG, Hermes, Cricket... rrdtool.org has a list of many. Most 
are geared towards folks running 100s-1000s of graphs, that I have seen, 
and may not be your kind of thing, as a result.

Best Regards,

Howie