to all sys admins

[seepy83]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: seepy83
Wow...since when does Excel not do graphs/trending? I must be really out of the loop :roll:

Is it a question of whether it does those things or whether it does them well? Yes, it does graphs (can't comment on trending, never really tried it).

Does it do them well? Well... No. It is too manual, and I assume (yes, with all implications of assume), it has trouble handling large data sets. It is also relatively static.

Input 2 million data points.
Create a graph.
Update it with 2 million more data points.
Does your graph change automagically?
In real time?
What kind of iron do you need to view that file?
Now, do it again for the other 300 things you want to track.
Now get started with the data on system 2.

Another thing a lot of these tools are good at is reporting. I want email/page/sms when something happens. Excel can't give me that.

I'm guessing excel is fine for small non-24/7/365 type shops, but I've never really worked in one of those.

EDIT: Here are 2 examples of applications that might just be appropriate for bigger installations:
https://labs.omniti.com/trac/reconnoiter">Reconnoiter</a> - it's a bit beta at the moment, but the idea (and people behind it) is great. I'm begging for an 8th day to the week (named monkeyday, a weekend day of course) so that I'd have time to play with it.
Splunk - this puts a lot of log tools to shame. The interface has got to be the prettiest I have ever played with. It's another monkeyday project though. Well, that and lack of spare hardware at the moment.

Based on the OP asking for comment on tasks that a Sys Admin would do daily, I am assuming that they are a relatively small shop. Obviously automated tools are great...even for small shops they can potentially save a lot of headaches. But based on the way the question was worded, I am guessing that they are small and have no budget for that type of monitoring software.

 

[Nothinman]

it has trouble handling large data sets. It is also relatively static.

Yea, even with pivot tables to pull the data from SQL it's slow because it basically pulls down every row and does all of the filtering and calculations locally.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: seepy83
Based on the OP asking for comment on tasks that a Sys Admin would do daily, I am assuming that they are a relatively small shop. Obviously automated tools are great...even for small shops they can potentially save a lot of headaches. But based on the way the question was worded, I am guessing that they are small and have no budget for that type of monitoring software.

Nagios and reconnioter are free. Splunk doesn't cost anything if your dataset is small enough (500M/day I think).

 

[seepy83]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: seepy83
Based on the OP asking for comment on tasks that a Sys Admin would do daily, I am assuming that they are a relatively small shop. Obviously automated tools are great...even for small shops they can potentially save a lot of headaches. But based on the way the question was worded, I am guessing that they are small and have no budget for that type of monitoring software.

Nagios and reconnioter are free. Splunk doesn't cost anything if your dataset is small enough (500M/day I think).

Yes...free if you already have the extra hardware to run it.