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Estimating hardware needs for Hobbit server

6 messages in this thread

list Dave Haertig · Mon, 2 Jul 2007 16:50:13 -0600 ·
Hi -
 
I'm currently running my Hobbit server/Apache on Linux-based Dell
Dimension desktop with the following:
 
# grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      2075380 kB
# grep name /proc/cpuinfo
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz
#

It's not even breathing hard.  It's just sitting there idle for the most
part.  (CPU load 0.02, physical mem used 35%, real mem 12%, nothing ever
swapped)
 
I found some older Sun hardware in the lab that I'm considering using as
a replacement, but I don't know how it's specs would compare.  I'm not
familiar with Sun/Sparc hardware all that much.  Can anyone comment on
if what I've scrounged up might be adequate?  At most, I'd expect to
eventually monitor several dozen servers, but probably no more than 100.
 
Ultra 5
Ultra 10 (350 MGz, 512 MB RAM)
E420R (2  - 450 MHz CPUs, 2 GB RAM)
 
Thanks!
list Andy France · Tue, 3 Jul 2007 11:14:02 +1200 ·
Hi Dave,
 
I'm running Hobbit on a Sun/Sparc/Solaris 9 box which is slightly more
up-spec (but only just!) than your options:
 
bash-3.2$ prtdiag
System Configuration: Sun Microsystems  sun4u Sun Fire V210
System clock frequency: 167 MHZ
Memory size: 512MB
 
==================================== CPUs
====================================
               E$          CPU                  CPU     Temperature
CPU  Freq      Size        Implementation       Mask    Die   Amb.
Status      Location
---  --------  ----------  -------------------  -----   ----  ----
------      --------
  0  1002 MHz  1MB         SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIIi   2.4     -     -
online      MB/P0
 
I currently monitor about 120 devices and my server is also hardly
breaking a sweat.  CPU load average is usually steady at 0.2, and it
uses about 70-80% real memory.
 
This server also runs a legacy Informix/4GL application, I use devmon to
monitor around a dozen devices, and I use a few custom shell scripts for
RRD graph generation.
 
I suspect any of the servers you listed would be fine for Hobbit in this
size deployment.
 
HTH,
Andy.
quoted from Dave Haertig


From: Haertig, David F (Dave) [mailto:user-68874b735d77@xymon.invalid] 
Sent: Tuesday, 3 July 2007 10:50 a.m.
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] Estimating hardware needs for Hobbit server


Hi -
 
I'm currently running my Hobbit server/Apache on Linux-based Dell
Dimension desktop with the following:
 
# grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      2075380 kB
# grep name /proc/cpuinfo
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz
#

It's not even breathing hard.  It's just sitting there idle for the most
part.  (CPU load 0.02, physical mem used 35%, real mem 12%, nothing ever
swapped)
 
I found some older Sun hardware in the lab that I'm considering using as
a replacement, but I don't know how it's specs would compare.  I'm not
familiar with Sun/Sparc hardware all that much.  Can anyone comment on
if what I've scrounged up might be adequate?  At most, I'd expect to
eventually monitor several dozen servers, but probably no more than 100.
 
Ultra 5
Ultra 10 (350 MGz, 512 MB RAM)
E420R (2  - 450 MHz CPUs, 2 GB RAM)
 
Thanks!

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list Henrik Størner · Tue, 3 Jul 2007 06:33:55 +0200 ·
quoted from Andy France
On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 04:50:13PM -0600, Haertig, David F (Dave) wrote:
I'm currently running my Hobbit server/Apache on Linux-based Dell
Dimension desktop [...]
I found some older Sun hardware in the lab that I'm considering using as
a replacement, but I don't know how it's specs would compare.  I'm not
familiar with Sun/Sparc hardware all that much.  Can anyone comment on
if what I've scrounged up might be adequate?  At most, I'd expect to
eventually monitor several dozen servers, but probably no more than 100.
 
Ultra 5
Ultra 10 (350 MGz, 512 MB RAM)
E420R (2  - 450 MHz CPUs, 2 GB RAM)
Ultra 5 and 10 are desktop systems. The E420 is a server-class system,
but all of them are fairly old - I have all of these at work, and they
were probably bought some 6-8 years ago.

But Hobbit doesn't require much hardware. My production Hobbit server 
is a Sun E220, which is a bit smaller than your E420. And I'm running
a Hobbit installation with more than 3000 hosts monitored.

So all of these boxes have enough power to run your Hobbit setup.
If you're free to choose, then I'd pick the E420 - it has some
server-side goodies like RAID disks with hotswap that the other
two don't have. And there's room for running a couple of heavy 
Hobbit add-on scripts.


Regards,
Henrik
list Bruce White · Tue, 3 Jul 2007 08:19:28 -0500 ·
If you put hobbit on that E420R, you'll have more then enough to monitor
your environment.  I have my hobbit server on an HP- RP5400 2x540 MHz - 6 GB
ram.  I'm monitoring 311 "hosts" (90 printers, 12 HPUX/Linux machines and
the windows servers).  The hobbit server has been averaging 54% idle and a
.7 load over the last 4 months.  Most of the monitoring on the windows
servers is not via the hobbit client but via SNMP walking the HP Insight
manager MIB on the windows server.  So the hobbit server is doing most of
that work.

 
   .....Bruce
quoted from Henrik Størner

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Haertig, David F (Dave) [mailto:user-68874b735d77@xymon.invalid] 
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 5:50 PM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] Estimating hardware needs for Hobbit server

 
Hi -

 
I'm currently running my Hobbit server/Apache on Linux-based Dell Dimension
desktop with the following:

 
# grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      2075380 kB
# grep name /proc/cpuinfo
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz
#

It's not even breathing hard.  It's just sitting there idle for the most
part.  (CPU load 0.02, physical mem used 35%, real mem 12%, nothing ever
swapped)

 
I found some older Sun hardware in the lab that I'm considering using as a
replacement, but I don't know how it's specs would compare.  I'm not
familiar with Sun/Sparc hardware all that much.  Can anyone comment on if
what I've scrounged up might be adequate?  At most, I'd expect to eventually
monitor several dozen servers, but probably no more than 100.

 
Ultra 5

Ultra 10 (350 MGz, 512 MB RAM)

E420R (2  - 450 MHz CPUs, 2 GB RAM)

 
Thanks!


Note: The information contained in this message may be privileged and
confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is
not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for
delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified
that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is
strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error,
please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from
your computer. Thank you. Fellowes, Inc.
list Dean Casey · Tue, 3 Jul 2007 10:18:08 -0400 ·
I'm hosting Hobbit on a 420R right now, monitoring 500+ hosts - 1gb RAM
2x 450-MHz cpu's. On this server, the Hobbit server, client binaries and
data files are all NFS-mounted. In our environment, the system is
clustered but everything normally runs on one side (this box).

Nineteen of the monitored systems have the client installed, set up to
report all default data (test columns) plus two custom tests. The same
420R also runs HPOV SNMP discovery (Network Node Manager 6.1) since I
can't convince the powers that-be to drop that expensive product, even
though hobbit + devmon will do nearly all of what we use hpov for in our
environment; Veritas Cluster 4.1; a small custom-written in-house
application; two small static web sites (in addition to the Hobbit
dynamic web site); a number of small cron job perl and shell scripts;
and daily rsync jobs of /etc/aliases, a custom scripts directory, and a
couple of ".profile" files. 

The system only has 1gb of physical RAM, and uses nearly all of that all
the time (but that doesn't cause any problems on the Solaris OS). CPU
utilization is usually well under 10%, with occasional spikes to 15-18%.

In my experience a 420-R should be more than enough muscle to run
Hobbit, even in a fairly complex environment with several hundred
servers monitored.  

Dean Casey 
quoted from Bruce White


From: White, Bruce [mailto:user-58f975e8bf9d@xymon.invalid] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 9:19 AM
To: 'user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid'
Subject: RE: [hobbit] Estimating hardware needs for Hobbit server

 
If you put hobbit on that E420R, you'll have more then enough to monitor
your environment.  I have my hobbit server on an HP- RP5400 2x540 MHz -
6 GB ram.  I'm monitoring 311 "hosts" (90 printers, 12 HPUX/Linux
machines and the windows servers).  The hobbit server has been averaging
54% idle and a .7 load over the last 4 months.  Most of the monitoring
on the windows servers is not via the hobbit client but via SNMP walking
the HP Insight manager MIB on the windows server.  So the hobbit server
is doing most of that work.

 
   .....Bruce

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Haertig, David F (Dave) [mailto:user-68874b735d77@xymon.invalid] 
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 5:50 PM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] Estimating hardware needs for Hobbit server

 
Hi -

 
I'm currently running my Hobbit server/Apache on Linux-based Dell
Dimension desktop with the following:

 
# grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      2075380 kB
# grep name /proc/cpuinfo
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz
#

It's not even breathing hard.  It's just sitting there idle for the most
part.  (CPU load 0.02, physical mem used 35%, real mem 12%, nothing ever
swapped)

 
I found some older Sun hardware in the lab that I'm considering using as
a replacement, but I don't know how it's specs would compare.  I'm not
familiar with Sun/Sparc hardware all that much.  Can anyone comment on
if what I've scrounged up might be adequate?  At most, I'd expect to
eventually monitor several dozen servers, but probably no more than 100.

 
Ultra 5

Ultra 10 (350 MGz, 512 MB RAM)

E420R (2  - 450 MHz CPUs, 2 GB RAM)

 
Thanks!


Note: The information contained in this message may be privileged and
confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this
message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent
responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you
are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of
this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this
communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the
message and deleting it from your computer. Thank you. Fellowes, Inc.

list Dean Casey · Tue, 3 Jul 2007 10:23:29 -0400 ·
Henrik is right, the 420-R definitely would be the best choice among
these three - dual CPU's, dual power supplies, better network
performance, ability to RAID mirror the disks, more expandability in
terms of additional network cards (can even use quad ethernet cards).
The SCSI disks in the 420-R usually last longer than the IDE disks in
the other two machines, and the 420-R is easier to get parts for
nowadays (at least in the USA).

Dean Casey
quoted from Henrik Størner
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 12:34 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Estimating hardware needs for Hobbit server

On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 04:50:13PM -0600, Haertig, David F (Dave) wrote:
I'm currently running my Hobbit server/Apache on Linux-based Dell
Dimension desktop [...]
I found some older Sun hardware in the lab that I'm considering using
as
a replacement, but I don't know how it's specs would compare.  I'm not
familiar with Sun/Sparc hardware all that much.  Can anyone comment on
if what I've scrounged up might be adequate?  At most, I'd expect to
eventually monitor several dozen servers, but probably no more than
100.
 
Ultra 5
Ultra 10 (350 MGz, 512 MB RAM)
E420R (2  - 450 MHz CPUs, 2 GB RAM)
Ultra 5 and 10 are desktop systems. The E420 is a server-class system,
but all of them are fairly old - I have all of these at work, and they
were probably bought some 6-8 years ago.

But Hobbit doesn't require much hardware. My production Hobbit server 
is a Sun E220, which is a bit smaller than your E420. And I'm running
a Hobbit installation with more than 3000 hosts monitored.

So all of these boxes have enough power to run your Hobbit setup.
If you're free to choose, then I'd pick the E420 - it has some
server-side goodies like RAID disks with hotswap that the other
two don't have. And there's room for running a couple of heavy 
Hobbit add-on scripts.


Regards,
Henrik