HP-UX Host template for 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. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.

After trying Cacti for a few days, I found it very useful, and full of potential, but I also found that it still doesn’t provide many useful templates.

In my case I tried to graph the usual performance metrics of an HP-UX box, and I couldn’t get it! So I developped some Data Queries, Data Templates and Graph Templates, and unified them in a Host Template.

For the moment I’ve only made an HP-UX template, but I plan to do a Linux host template basing me on the same (or corresponding) metrics.

The HP-UX Host template provides the following graphs:

* *CPU Usage*: Sys, Nice, User and Idle CPU time
* Jobs Average: 1, 5, and 15min Jobs Average
* Memory: Total vs. Used/Free
* Swap: Total vs. Used/Free
* Processes: Number of running processes
* Users: Number of logged in users
* Lan traffic (associated to Data Query “HPUX Lan”): In/Out Traffic and In/Out Errors
* Filesystem (associated to Data Query “HPUX Filesystems”): Total vs Used/Free blocks

Feel free to download the template, and use and/or redistribute it under the terms of the GPL license.

The 80/20 rule

I’ve learned a lot of things during my studies… I’ve also forgotten a lot of them. However, I remember some principles that were taught to me. Ironically, they had almost nothing to do with the academical studies.

One of those principles that I remember, and I always try apply is the so called “80/20 rule”.

It’s best applied to reading. In that particular context, the rule says that 80% of the meaningfull content of the article/book/report… (whatever you intend to read) could actually be found in 20% of it, while the other 80% of the material will just give you the remaining 20% of the content.

I really trust that rule. It’s a really true *lifehack*!

It’s well explained in “A Quick and Dirty Reading Strategy When Time is Short” by Bert Webb. Worth the read!

Nexenta OS: towards a Debian GNU/Solaris ?

Nexenta OS is a combination of OpenSolaris kernel (forked from SunOS), and Debian distribution packages systems.

Although I rather dislike the whole Solaris OS as it’s made right now, I do like Debian’s way of doing things. For that reason I think that Nexenta project could lead to a promising OS alternative in the Unix world.

Nexenta OS Pre-Alpha 1 ISO has been released for download. I think i’ll give it a try.