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Cacti

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RRDtool

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Cacti vs RRDtool: What are the differences?

  1. Data Collection and Visualization: Cacti is a network graphing solution that uses RRDtool as its backend for data storage and graphing capabilities. RRDtool, on the other hand, is a standalone tool specifically designed for efficiently storing and visualizing time-series data.

  2. User Interface and Features: Cacti provides a user-friendly web interface for configuring data collection and creating custom graphs, while RRDtool primarily offers a command-line interface for managing and manipulating data stored in Round-Robin Databases (RRDs).

  3. Automation and Templates: Cacti allows users to create templates for monitoring various devices and services, which simplifies the process of adding new data sources and generating consistent graphs. RRDtool does not provide built-in support for templates or automation features.

  4. Community Support and Extensions: Cacti has a vibrant community of users and developers who regularly create plugins and extensions to enhance its functionality and integrate with other systems. RRDtool, being a standalone tool, relies on third-party applications or scripts for extended capabilities.

  5. Integration with Monitoring Systems: Cacti can be integrated with popular network monitoring systems like Nagios or Zabbix to provide a comprehensive solution for monitoring and graphing network performance metrics. RRDtool is more commonly used as a backend tool by monitoring systems to store and display performance data.

  6. Maintenance and Scalability: Cacti simplifies the maintenance of monitoring systems by offering a centralized interface for managing data sources and graphs. RRDtool, being more low-level, requires additional expertise to scale and maintain for larger deployments.

In Summary, Cacti and RRDtool differ in terms of their user interfaces, features, integrations, and maintenance requirements, making them suitable for different monitoring and graphing requirements.

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Pros of Cacti
Pros of RRDtool
  • 3
    Free
  • 3
    Rrdtool based
  • 2
    Fast poller
  • 1
    Graphs from snmp
  • 1
    Graphs from language independent scripts
  • 6
    Do one thing and do it well

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What is Cacti?

Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box.

What is RRDtool?

RRDtool lets you log and analyze the data you gather from all kinds of data-sources (DS). The data analysis part of RRDtool is based on the ability to quickly generate graphical representations of the data values collected over a definable time period.

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Jobs that mention Cacti and RRDtool as a desired skillset
Postman
San Francisco, United States
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What tools integrate with Cacti?
What tools integrate with RRDtool?
What are some alternatives to Cacti and RRDtool?
Zabbix
Zabbix is a mature and effortless enterprise-class open source monitoring solution for network monitoring and application monitoring of millions of metrics.
Munin
Munin is a networked resource monitoring tool that can help analyze resource trends and "what just happened to kill our performance?" problems. It is designed to be very plug and play. A default installation provides a lot of graphs with almost no work.
Cactus
Cactus makes setting up a website look easy. Choose a template for a blog, portfolio or single page and Cactus generates all files and folders to get you on your way.
Nagios
Nagios is a host/service/network monitoring program written in C and released under the GNU General Public License.
Solarwinds
Developed by network and systems engineers who know what it takes to manage today's dynamic IT environments, SolarWinds has a deep connection to the IT community.
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