Monday
Jun272005
Telemetry's Next Steps
Monday, June 27, 2005 at 7:28AM
Telemetry was originally developed years go as a monitoring and visualization tool for a place I worked. I open sourced it, and you can find it if you search for Loggerithim. I probably posted about it here a time or two.
Loggerithim included an agent that was installed on the boxes you wanted to monitor. It reported CPU, memory, network, and filesystem usage back to your Loggerithim install. I originally intended to use the Host MIB for this, but quickly discovered every implementation was different. Or at least that's what I convinced myself. The agent ended up being quite spiffy, with dynamically loaded plugins and the ability to receive commands remotely. All of this over an SSL connection.
Loggerithim also had mechanisms for scheduling jobs (there was an API for Perl), thresholds, notification, and users with groups.
Telemetry was an opportunity to create a more powerful charting system, which I found in JFreeChart. The charting I use can only become more powerful, as I am only using the included factories from JFreeChart with no customization. I also took the time to refine the names I chose for the different pieces. Jackson will confirm how important names are to me in development. ;)
But what do I do with Telemetry now? The only feature I have firmly decided I am adding at this point is Annotations. This would allow you to mark an important event and attach it to a particular system or node so that it will show up when you create a chart. "Holy Smokes! We did 25% more transactions today than is normal! Oh, this annotation says Marketing sent an email. Brilliant!". That sort of thing.
All the features from Loggerithim are overkill. I prefer to focus on creating something that does on job elegantly. Perhaps I can write the other stuff separately...
The next step is probably to get it setup at the office and start seeing how we use the thing. That's probably an idea.
Loggerithim included an agent that was installed on the boxes you wanted to monitor. It reported CPU, memory, network, and filesystem usage back to your Loggerithim install. I originally intended to use the Host MIB for this, but quickly discovered every implementation was different. Or at least that's what I convinced myself. The agent ended up being quite spiffy, with dynamically loaded plugins and the ability to receive commands remotely. All of this over an SSL connection.
Loggerithim also had mechanisms for scheduling jobs (there was an API for Perl), thresholds, notification, and users with groups.
Telemetry was an opportunity to create a more powerful charting system, which I found in JFreeChart. The charting I use can only become more powerful, as I am only using the included factories from JFreeChart with no customization. I also took the time to refine the names I chose for the different pieces. Jackson will confirm how important names are to me in development. ;)
But what do I do with Telemetry now? The only feature I have firmly decided I am adding at this point is Annotations. This would allow you to mark an important event and attach it to a particular system or node so that it will show up when you create a chart. "Holy Smokes! We did 25% more transactions today than is normal! Oh, this annotation says Marketing sent an email. Brilliant!". That sort of thing.
All the features from Loggerithim are overkill. I prefer to focus on creating something that does on job elegantly. Perhaps I can write the other stuff separately...
The next step is probably to get it setup at the office and start seeing how we use the thing. That's probably an idea.
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