I’ve packaged up and released version 1.1.2 of the Cacti templates I’ve written for MySQL, Apache, memcached, nginx etc.

Anyone who would like to help write documentation (or do anything else, for that matter) is welcomed to participate. I’ll give commit access at the drop of a hat.

Changelog:

2009-05-07: version 1.1.2

        * The parsing code did not handle InnoDB plugin / XtraDB (issue 52).
        * The servername was hardcoded in ss_get_by_ssh.php (issue 57).
        * Added Handler_ graphs (issue 47).
        * Config files can be used instead of editing the .php file (issue 39).
        * binary log space is now calculated without a MySQL query (issue 48).
        * There was no easy way to force inputs to be filled (issue 45).
        * Some graphs were partially hidden without --lower-limit (issue 43).
        * Flipped some elements across the …

Cacti is a great tool for collecting information about systems and graphing it. However, it likes to use SNMP, and SNMP is often not desirable. Instead, I often see the need for a method that is:

• Secure. Use trusted, well-known, encrypted communication. Do not open up new ports.
• Zero install on the monitored system.
• As little installation or modification on the monitoring system as possible.

Over the last several years, I’ve slowly created more and more software to create Cacti graphs via standard POSIX command-line utilities over SSH with key-pair authentication. (I’ve also created similar software for Nagios, but that’s another matter.) The major problem with the work I’ve done is that it’s totally un-publicized.

The system works by passing command-line arguments to a local PHP script like any other Cacti script. This …

Merlin is MySQL’s Enterprise Monitor, a system designed to monitor a number of MySQL database servers and provide useful feedback to the DBAs as to how they are running and what things may require attention.

It provides various things:

• graphs of key database and server performance indicators: load average, cpu usage and mysql specific information such as number of database connections, replication delays, buffer usage statistics, etc…
• a set of advisors which are intended to tell you if things are not configured properly and what to do to correct the problem.
• monitoring of servers which are linked together through replication
• the latest version of merlin (v2.0, which has been available since the beginning of the year) additionally adds via mysql proxy the ability to see all the queries which are …

It’s been a while since I’ve sent any news about the MySQL Cacti Templates project I started a while ago. Here’s what’s new:

First of all, it’s not just MySQL templates anymore. It’s a generic framework and tools for creating templates, and I’ve written templates for Apache, Memcached, etc. I just haven’t publicized [...]

I’ve released version 1.1.1 of the MySQL Cacti templates I develop. The new templates work around more Cacti limitations, including the limitation on the length of the data returned from the poller script. There’s also a new graph and many other niceties since the last release.

Note that there are TWO incompatible changes with [...]

I’ve created a set of Cacti templates for graphing stats about MySQL. While these were based on several other people’s work, there are many improvements. One of them in particular I want to bring up, and I’ll go so far as to say it ought to be a “best practice” for graphing. [...]

Baron posted something interesting about agent vs agent-less monitoring in response to Rob.

While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that the distinction is somewhat misleading, if not wrong.

I’d go so far as to say that agent-less doesn’t exist as such. Why do I say such heresy?

Trivially, you need some piece of software to collect data. With munin you configure a server that triggers scripts on the monitored servers. The set of data sources is governed by what you install in the correct directory on the monitored server. Cacti relies on SNMP heavily and also …

Rob Young has posted a few blog entries lately on the MySQL Enterprise monitoring software. His latest post claims that agent-based monitoring is equivalent to extensibility (MySQL Enterprise Monitor: Agent = Extensibility).

I think this is conflating two completely distinct properties of a monitoring solution. Cacti is extremely extensible, with a plugin-based architecture and [...]

Baron posted something interesting about agent vs agent-less monitoring in response to Rob.

While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that the distinction is somewhat misleading, if not wrong.

I’d go so far as to say that agent-less doesn’t exist as such. Why do I say such heresy?

Trivially, you need some piece of software to collect data. With munin you configure a server that triggers scripts on the monitored servers. The set of data sources is governed by what you install in the correct directory on the monitored server. Cacti relies on SNMP heavily and also …

Baron posted something interesting about agent vs agent-less monitoring in response to Rob.

While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that the distinction is somewhat misleading, if not wrong.

I’d go so far as to say that agent-less doesn’t exist as such. Why do I say such heresy?

Trivially, you need some piece of software to collect data. With munin you configure a server that triggers scripts on the monitored servers. The set of data sources is governed by what you install in the correct directory on the monitored server. Cacti relies on SNMP heavily and also …