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Cacti vs Graphite: What are the differences?
Data Collection Mechanism: Cacti primarily collects data via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) whereas Graphite collects data using custom scripts such as StatsD or CollectD. This difference in data collection mechanisms impacts the type of data that can be gathered and analyzed by each tool.
Data Visualization: Cacti offers predefined templates and graphs for visualization making it easier for users to create visual representations of their data. On the other hand, Graphite provides more flexibility in data visualization with its ability to create custom graphs based on individual requirements and specifications.
Storage Backend: Cacti stores its data in RRD (Round-Robin Database) files which are efficient for time-series data but have limitations in terms of scalability and long-term data retention. In contrast, Graphite stores data in a custom database system known as Whisper that provides better scalability and long-term storage capabilities.
Alerting Mechanism: Cacti lacks a built-in alerting mechanism for notifying users about specific events or thresholds being crossed. Graphite, on the other hand, offers advanced alerting features where users can set up thresholds and receive alerts via various channels such as email or SMS.
Community Support: Cacti has a well-established user community with a large number of plugins and resources available for users to enhance and customize their monitoring experience. Graphite, while popular in its own right, may have a smaller community which could impact the availability of resources and support for users.
Integration Capabilities: Cacti integrates seamlessly with other monitoring tools and systems, making it a suitable choice for environments with diverse infrastructure components. Graphite, with its focus on custom scripts and plugins, may require more effort in integrating with external systems and tools.
In Summary, Cacti and Graphite differ in data collection mechanisms, visualization capabilities, storage backends, alerting mechanisms, community support, and integration capabilities in monitoring and graphing solutions.
Looking for a tool which can be used for mainly dashboard purposes, but here are the main requirements:
- Must be able to get custom data from AS400,
- Able to display automation test results,
- System monitoring / Nginx API,
- Able to get data from 3rd parties DB.
Grafana is almost solving all the problems, except AS400 and no database to get automation test results.
You can look out for Prometheus Instrumentation (https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/instrumentation/) Client Library available in various languages https://prometheus.io/docs/instrumenting/clientlibs/ to create the custom metric you need for AS4000 and then Grafana can query the newly instrumented metric to show on the dashboard.
Pros of Cacti
- Free3
- Rrdtool based3
- Fast poller2
- Graphs from snmp1
- Graphs from language independent scripts1
Pros of Graphite
- Render any graph16
- Great functions to apply on timeseries9
- Well supported integrations8
- Includes event tracking6
- Rolling aggregation makes storage managable3
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What is Cacti?
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