Visualizing system performance with MRTG

PICTURES

Article from Issue 92/2008
Author(s):

MRTG generates simple graphs for viewing network performance at a glance.

Linux admins often benefit from capturing system performance metrics such as disk utilization, CPU usage, and memory usage. A handy performance chart helps in diagnosing problems and analyzing traffic issues. Multi-Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) lets you collect and graph network and performance data from Linux hosts. MRTG is an open source graphing tool that collects and displays statistics from SNMP-based network devices.

Commercial tools, such as HP’s Open- View or IBM’s Tivoli, as well as open source utilities, such as Cacti and Zenoss (a beefed-up version of MRTG), serve a similar role, but in my opinion, MRTG is the best solution for trending and collecting server performance data.

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Network Monitoring Intro

    If you can’t monitor everything yourself, why not let your computers watch your computers? This month we examine some practical techniques for network monitoring.

  • Argus

    Argus helps you monitor the flow of data on your network, detect trends, discover worms and viruses, and analyze bandwidth usage.

  • USENIX LISA: When 1000 Computers are too Slow

    Open source developer Tobias Oetiker, in his presentation at the USENIX LISA conference in San Diego, described how he could help one thousand Windows users at Swisscom.com speed up their computers.

  • Books
  • Pinger

    The Pinger network monitoring tool uses ping to look for switches and estimate cable lengths.

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News