Slashdot Mirror
Suggestions For Cheap Metrics Eye Candy Software?
Banquo writes "I have a friend who has a small datacenter (SQL/Mail/IIS/File Repository ... 5 or 10 servers) and he was saying that his boss wants to see some kind of 'visual display of changing metrics' — Net/server/sql stats with moving lines and graphs and pretty colors. Basically they want something to display on a big LCD panel that will give a tiny bit of 'Wow' factor to customer visits. Back in my datacenter days I saw a million packages to do this stuff, but I was always blessed with an IT budget for metrics/monitoring. Can anyone suggest a free/cheap package that will make pretty moving pictures, moving lines, graphs, etc. from server/net stats? There's no worry about actually using this for real data tracking or metrics purposes. He has a pretty robust log/alert/metrics setup, but command line is a little too dry for marketing purposes. I jokingly suggested he just use a looped flash animation but he actually does want stats that are coming from and reflect his environment. Anyone know of any cheap or free data center stats/metrics 'Eye Candy' software out there?" Better yet, can you think of any particularly interesting ways to display that sort of information?
When I want to look impressive at work I go into "The Matrix",
Top, and watch tail logfile really impress people.
This will make it look like you/your techs are amazing, and doing things that noone can conceive of. Pie charts and graphs make the job look easy, and noone wants to pay for easy.
My 2 cents.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
you're a dick. given that this guy is low salary he probably doesn't have a lot of experience. you could have shown him the error of his ways, instead you publicly embarrass him in front of the whole company. glad I don't work with you.
That's "flair". Geek card please!