Cacti vs Chronosphere: What are the differences?

# Introduction
Cacti and Chronosphere are both popular monitoring tools used in the IT industry. While they both offer monitoring capabilities, they have key differences that set them apart.

1. **Data Storage**: Cacti stores its data in RRD files, which stands for Round-Robin Database, allowing for efficient storage and retrieval of time-series data. On the other hand, Chronosphere utilizes a scalable, cloud-native storage solution, providing greater flexibility and scalability for growing data needs.

2. **Monitoring Capabilities**: Cacti is primarily focused on network monitoring, offering features such as SNMP data collection and graphing. In contrast, Chronosphere provides a wide range of monitoring capabilities beyond network monitoring, including application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and more.

3. **Scalability**: Chronosphere is designed to be highly scalable, able to handle large amounts of data and high-throughput workloads with ease. Cacti, while capable of scaling to some extent, may face limitations when dealing with a significant increase in data volume and monitoring needs.

4. **Alerting and Notifications**: Chronosphere includes robust alerting and notification mechanisms, allowing users to set up custom alerts based on their specific monitoring requirements. Cacti, on the other hand, may require additional plugins or configurations to achieve similar alerting functionalities.

5. **Cloud-Native Architecture**: Chronosphere is built on a cloud-native architecture, making it well-suited for cloud-based environments and modern infrastructure setups. Cacti, while adaptable to cloud environments, may require additional configurations to optimize performance and scalability in such settings.

6. **Analytics and Reporting**: Chronosphere offers advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing users to gain deeper insights from their monitoring data through data visualization and analysis tools. Cacti, while providing basic reporting features, may lack the advanced analytics functionalities offered by Chronosphere.

In Summary, Cacti and Chronosphere differ in their data storage methods, monitoring capabilities, scalability, alerting mechanisms, architecture, and analytics features.