I would like to know the difference between Grafana and PRTG from a functional point of view.
We use PRTG at work and I have to do a proof of concept on Grafana.
Every morning I look at the errors / warnings reported by PRTG but I lack overall visibility. So after some research I saw that PRTG offer to create MAPS (dashboards) but it seems limited to infra / network.
My objective is initially to make an easy correlation between the infrastructure's monitored elements (storage, vmware, switchs, etc...) and PRTG Maps seem to more or less meet the needs. Also I want to do daily/weekly reporting and easily follow the evolution of the infra over the month.
But on the other hand, I would like to be able to offer application dashboards and potentially dedicated to other teams (helpdesk, change manager, etc.)..
Grafana looks more friendly and especially seems to be able to create dashboards on other perimeters.
Can the two tools be complementary or PRTG is ok on its own ?
Thank you.
PRTG allows you to create application dashboards - you are limited only by sensors you have in your system. This means if you create only system level sensors like Ping, CPU, network utilization - then you cannot really say much about your application since you monitor only infrastructure.
PRTG is good in creating Maps in comparison to other monitoring tools and they are now working on improvement of this functionality (see their roadmap). Creating maps specific to teams in your company is possible with PRTG (permissions can be set) and is good idea in general.
To make weekly/daily reports there is possibility to let PRTG send you email with attached PDF related to sensor[s] you choose. Similar functionality has Grafana (cloud/enterprise version)
The difference between PRTG and Grafana as of January 2022 is that PRTG does not allow you to zoom into charts dynamically (meaning with your mouse at specific start/stop date/time range) - its much more "static" in this regard and you as user wish to have this option. If you create application map in PRTG then you can forget any zooming or changing of date on that dashboard - its just not built for it. Its more like "what is status now" dashboard, but never for analysis of issues which happened yesterday which is exactly what you want if something happened during weekend and its Monday.
I see that Grafana has some Machine Learning possibility where PRTG has none - it only shows you similar behavior of sensors but that is good for a cat (at least i never needed it in my 7+ years of using PRTG)
Grafana as far i know it is just a frontend but PRTG is whole monitoring system inclusive frontend so you are not comparing sensor capabilities here - in this PRTG is really very good and they are adding new sensors every month (meaning for new vendors/hardware you have possibility to monitor them with specialised sensors built just for this hardware)
I don't think you can combine Grafana and PRTG - its either or since you have different monitoring engine on background of Grafana.
Hope it answers your questions
Related
I am looking into distribution tracing tools.
Found there two very popular.
OpenTracing - https://opentracing.io/
Zipkin - https://zipkin.io/
What are key differences between them ?
Which one would you recommend ?
Will you recommend other open source distributed tracking tool ?
Getting a handle on the distributed tracing space can be a bit confusing. Here's a quick summary...
Open Source Tracers
There are a number of popular open source tracers, which is where Zipkin sits:
Zipkin
Jaeger
Haystack
Commercial Tracers
There are also a lot of vendors offering commercial monitoring/observability tools which are either centred around or include distributed tracing:
Appdynamics
AWS X-Ray
Azure Application Insights
Datadog
Dynatrace
Google Cloud Trace
Honeycomb
Lightstep
New Relic
SignalFX
(probably 100 more...)
Standardisation Efforts
Alongside all these products are numerous attempts at creating standards around distributed tracing. These typically start by creating a standard API for the trace-recording side of the architecture, and sometimes extend to become prescriptive about the content of traces or even the wire format. This is where OpenTracing fits in. So it is not a tracing solution itself, but an API that can be implemented by the trace recording SDKs of multiple tracers, allowing you to swap between vendors more easily. The most common standards are:
OpenTracing
OpenCensus
OpenTelemetry
Note that the first two in the list have been abandoned, with their contributors joining forces to create the third one together.[1]
[1] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2019/05/opentelemetry-merger-of-opencensus-and.html
Most popular logging and monitoring stacks like ELK stack or Time series DB-Grafana are designed to be integrated. Can AppDynamics work with other samplers/DBs, in particular Prometheus?
There are integration tools available between influxdb/AppDynamics and grafana/AppDynamics.
https://github.com/Appdynamics/MetricMover
https://grafana.com/plugins/dlopes7-appdynamics-datasource/installation).
There's nothing that integrates between Prometheus and AppDynamics at the moment
I'm not sure there will be one going forward, seeing how they are competing in the same space from different vantage points (Open Source vs Enterprise)
I have a distributed monitoring system that collects and gathers monitoring data like CPU utilization, database performance metrics, network performance into a backend store. Other applications need to consume these data like real-time calculating(for a resource scheduler) , for system monitoring(to system administrator using monitoring dashboard), for historical analytic(to operation and analyzer program to modeling the resource using pattern for future capacity planning and business system activity analysis).
The dataset size is about 1.2 billion entries in the data store for 9 months. (all in OpenTSDB like format)
Previously I used an Elasticsearch cluster as the backend data store solution and decide to find a better one.
I am looking at Couchbase or VoltDB cluster but still in investigation stage so need some input from here who has the similar experience.
Major questions are as below:
Which backend store solution is good for my scenario? (Couchbase or VoltDB)?
I have to rewrite my data aggregator code (which is in golang). Couchbase provide a good golang SDK client but VoltDB's go driver is only in community level with limited function. So are there any better implementation to communicate with voltdb in golang?
Any suggestion or best practice on it?
There isn't too much in the way of usage patterns here, but it sounds like the kind of app people use VoltDB for.
As for the Golang client, we'd love some feedback as to how to make it more suitable if it's specifically missing something you need. You can also use the HTTP/JSON query interface from any language, including Golang. More info on that here:
http://docs.voltdb.com/UsingVoltDB/ProgLangJson.php
If you would like to leverage your existing model, take a look at Axibase Time-Series Database. It supports both tcollector network and http protocols. Rule engine and visualization are built-in.
The fact that ATSD is based on HBase may be an asset or a liability depending on your prior experience with it :)
URL to tcollector integation: http://axibase.com/products/axibase-time-series-database/writing-data/tcollector/
Disclosure: I work for the company developing ATSD.
How can i write a cloud-aware application? e.g. an application that takes benefit of being deployed on cloud. Is it same as an application that runs or a vps/dedicated server? if not then what are the differences? are there any design changes? What are the procedures that i need to take if i am to migrate an application to cloud-aware?
Also i am about to implement a web application idea which would need features like security, performance, caching, and more importantly free. I have been comparing some frameworks and found that django has least RAM/CPU usage and works great in prefork+threaded mode, but i have also read that django based sites stop to respond with huge load of connections. Other frameworks that i have seen/know are Zend, CakePHP, Lithium/Cake3, CodeIgnitor, Symfony, Ruby on Rails....
So i would leave this to your opinion as well, suggest me a good free framework based on my needs.
Finally thanks for reading the essay ;)
I feel a matrix moment coming on... "what is the cloud? The cloud is all around us, a prison for your program..." (what? the FAQ said bring your sense of humour...)
Ok so seriously, what is the cloud? It depends on the implementation but usual features include scalable computing resource and a charge per cpu-hour, storage area etc. So yes, it is a bit like developing on your VPS/a normal server.
As I understand it, Google App Engine allows you to consume as much as you want. The back-end resource management is done by Google and billed to you and you pay for what you use. I believe there's even a free threshold.
Amazon EC2 exposes an API that actually allows you to add virtual machine instances (someone correct me please if I'm wrong) having pre-configured them, deploy another instance of your web app, talk between private IP ranges if you wish (slicehost definitely allow this). As such, EC2 can allow you to act like a giant load balancer on the front-end passing work off to a whole number of VMs on the back end, or expose all that publicly, take your pick. I'm not sure on the exact detail because I didn't build the system but that's how I understand it.
I have a feeling (but I know least about Azure) that on Azure, resource management is done automatically, for you, by Microsoft, based on what your app uses.
So, in summary, the cloud is different things depending on which particular cloud you choose. EC2 seems to expose an API for managing resource, GAE and Azure appear to be environments which grow and shrink in the background based on your use.
Note: I am aware there are certain constraints developing in GAE, particularly with Java. In a minute, I'll edit in another thread where someone made an excellent comment on one of my posts to this effect.
Edit as promised, see this thread: Cloud Agnostic Architecture?
As for a choice of framework, it really doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned. If you are planning on deploying to one of these platforms you might want to check framework/language availability. I personally have just started Django and love it, having learnt python a while ago, so, in my totally unbiased opinion, use Django. Other developers will probably recommend other things, based on their preferences. What do you know? What are you most comfortable with? What do you like the most? I'd go with that. I chose Django purely because I'm not such a big fan of PHP, I like Python and I was comfortable with the framework when I initially played around with it.
Edit: So how do you write cloud-aware code? You design your software in such a way it fits on one of these architectures. Again, see the cloud-agnostic thread for some really good discussion on ways of doing this. For example, you might talk to some services on GAE which scale. That they are on GAE (example) doesn't really matter, you use loose coupling ideas. In essence, this is just a step up from the web service idea.
Also, another feature of the cloud I forgot to mention is the idea of CDN's being provided for you - some cloud implementations might move your data around the globe to make it more efficient to serve, or just because that's where they've got space. If that's an issue, don't use the cloud.
I cannot answer your question - I'm not experienced in such projects - but I can tell you one thing... both CakePHP and CodeIgniter are designed for PHP4 - in other words: for really old technology. And it seems nothing is going to change in their case. Symfony (especially 2.0 version which is still in heavy beta) is worth considering, but as I said on the very beginning - I can not support this with my own experience.
For designing applications for deployment for the cloud, the main thing to consider if recoverability. If your server is terminated, you may lose all of your data. If you're deploying on Amazon, I'd recommend putting all data that you need persisted onto an Elastic Block Storage (EBS) device. This would be data like user generated content/files, the database files and logs. I also use the EBS snapshot on a 5 day rotation so that's backed up itself. That said, I've had a cloud server up on AWS for over a year without any issues.
As for frameworks, I'm giving Grails a try at the minute and I'm quite enjoying it. Built to be syntactically similar to Rails but runs on the JVM. It means you can take advantage of all the Java goodness, like threading, concurrency and all the great libraries out there to build your web application.
Any suggestions for an accurate Web Log analysis tool to generate reports on the IIS logs? We used WebTrends, but I don't feel it was accurate.
To analyze weblogs, I don't think you can go wrong with Analog: http://www.analog.cx/
If you are analyzing your own logs, which are often huge files, you will want the fastest analyzer you can find. Analog is fast.
You'll want one that's been around awhile and is still supported. Analog just celebrated its 10'th birthday.
Analog claims to be the most popular logfile analyser in the world.
Multi-languages.
Did I say its free and open source?
As far as accuracy goes, no tool gives perfect results. Javascript fails often in catching hits. Trying to track individual people's paths through a website (i.e. for Analytics purposes) is fraught with problems. And even trying to differentiate hits versus visits and screening out the bots is all more of a black art than a science.
What is best is simply to have a tool that gives decent basic statistics that tell you what you need to know.
I've looked at other tools, such as Deep Log Analyzer: http://www.deep-software.com/, which attempts to do analytics from your weblogs. But speed was a problem. They claim their new version 3.5 - April 2008, which I didn't try, has improved performance. The big advantage of a program like this is the advanced reporting you can do, including custom SQL requests. You have to purchase their professional version ($200) to do most of the analytics and custom queries. If Analog is too simple for you, then try the free version of Deep Log Analyzer.
And you can also try Microsoft's own Log Parser, as was the recommended answer in: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/157677/a-good-iis-log-viewer-for-large-log-files.
But you will need some extra skills to use it.
What are you wanting to analyze from your logs? There are a bunch of tools out there - free or paid for - that will go through the logs and spit out a great variety of figures. Some have real meaning, others are best used with a grain of salt.
What none will show you is "How many people are actually reading my wonderful web pages". Those that attempt to show "distinct site visitors" or any detailed metrics are at best a rough approximation to an indication of a vague trend...
But for what it's worth, we use Analog.
SHORT ANSWER:
You are correct to question the results; log analysis is not adequate to report actual traffic.
LONGER ANSWER:
WebTrends is a great tool for what it delivers. But as a previous administrator of a WebTrends installation, I found that web logs are notoriously bad at capturing metrics of interest.
For instance, if there exists any caching in your web delivery stack (or on the consumers side-- *I'm shaking my fist at YOU, AOL!), then your web logs are instantly non-reflective of your site's actual activity. This is because log analysis assumes that all user consumption will translate to an HTTP request back to the web server-- and thus having been recorded in the IIS logs. In the case of a cache, this would not be the case.
In the future if you want more reliable results, you ultimately need to ensure that there exists a way to bust any caching strategy. The obvious answer is dynamic content. But if you do not want to rewrite all of your content in such a fashion, just ensure your web traffic analysis uses a dynamic call.
WebTrends actually offers a solution to this problem, called SDC server. This is exactly what Google Analytics offers as well-- it's a javascript call back to the analysis server.
...I could go for days on this. If you want more specific information, comment back. ;)
EDIT: With WebTrends, specifically, it is quite important to configure session tracking beyond their default IP/userAgent configuration. If your web server assigns a session cookie, you will find this will increase your reliability; especially for differentiating between users which may sit behind the same NAT.
I have had really good luck with SmarterStats, from SmarterTools.
There is a logging package for free from MSFT for viewing this information using SQL Reporting Services. Google it.
doing it with the logs is only a good idea if it's internal - I'd use google analytics for anyhing on teh internets
I have been using Summary, which is paid for software, for years, and love it. The cost of updates is getting to me, and paying for an update to just get user agent string updates out of the deal is getting bothersome. Not that there are not other fixes, I just tend to not need them.
Anyone care to share if they have used Summary compared to analog?
Look at XpoLog log analysis platform for web application servers and web servers log. it a log management and analysis platform that integrate to web servers logs and create reports, provide search and log viewer and also monitor for problems. XpoLog