Strengths of Cacti?

[Mark Young]

On Aug 7, 2009, at 4:59 PM, Kevin Keane wrote:

> I'm curious to learn more about Cacti - the Cacti Web site and Google
> are of course very helpful, but I'm looking primarily for a comparison
> between Cacti and pnp4nagios.
>
> Right now, I'm using nagios 3.0.6 together with pnp4nagios, and that
> seems to be working very well, and setting up pnp4nagios is a snap, of
> course.
>
> At first glance, it seems that Cacti does roughly the same thing as
> pnp4nagios. Is that correct, or are they really like apples and  
> oranges?
> Which one is better? Or probably a better question: what are their
> respective strengths and weaknesses, why would I use one or the other?


Cacti and PNP4Nagios are different ideas.  Cacti polls its own data,  
often through SNMP traps.  While PNP4Nagios uses Nagios performance  
data from Nagios' scheduled checks.  In my experience both can/should  
be setup depending on your needs.  As a Nagios addon, PNP4Nagios is a  
great way to use the performance data from Nagios in an efficient way;  
Nagios handles the checks and sends notifications.  Cacti often polls  
fewer services but at a smaller time interval (services such as router  
bandwidth, system load) and is much more efficient if all you want is  
graphs.

If PNP4Nagios is working great for you I suggest you stay with it.  If  
you are looking for "fine grain" graphing you could either increase  
the Nagios check interval, or setup Cacti.  You should keep in mind  
that if you are working in a large installation both solution have  
scaling issues (and solutions).  Also if you are looking to expand  
your graphing you should look into Nagios plugins that offer  
performance data.  Such as switching from check_ping to check_icmp

Best of luck!

Mark Young

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