I saw that you posted a roadmap- great stuff! I'd just like to comment a little on it- I hope you're open to feedback about what users priorities are.
I really like the template package feature- that sounds awesome; makes it easier for end-users to package up support for a new device and post it. One thing I'll comment is I've noticed some packages where you need to go in and update some variables to make scripts work in your environment. You might want to do a review of some of the scripts, and see if there are certain common things which need to be updated at install time, and set up support for passing those into the scripts, or if there's already support for that, add some documentation for folks to get the information and update their scripts with
One thing that seemed kind of glaring to me was that you're not planning on revamping the interface until .89/.90. I see you're doing several things to make cacti work better for large installations before then (including boost, updating cactid, etc.). I'd like to mention again- managing your graph trees even today, even for smaller installations is a chore. I mentioned this before, and people agreed, but I'm guessing there wasn't consensus on what to do- http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?t=12025
I'd like to propose the following-
1. Add a feature to "convert" a host node to a header node with all the graphs included from the host node.
2. Add the ability to bulk delete or move graphs from one header to another.
Those features would make the tree management a lot easier.
I also wanted to bring up a couple use points towards future development. Currently, you default to autoscaled graphs. This is good for seeing patterns, but not so good for finding which port is seeing a ton of traffic.
There are a couple of things which could mitigate this.
1. Add an option to toggle a page of graphs betweeen autoscale and fixed scale. This could be done by adding fixed scaling options to tree nodes, so when you convert, it uses the fixed scale info from the page.
2. Add the ability to "sort" the graphs on a page based on the data in the graphs. If you set up the ability to pull out certain figures for each graph - total transfer, largest spike, etc.... you could do this, and it would be way cool. I'd say this would be something to keep in mind when you're re-architecting things for the next generation interface.
Lastly, I want to apologize. I contacted TheWitness early this year indicating I wanted to contribute to cacti development. Unfortunately, shortly after I contacted him, we had a sprinkler head break above our server room- 60 gallons of water a minute were pumped out over all my servers. Since then, I've brought everything back from the dead and then got a ton of budget to totally rebuild my IT infrastructure. I've rebuilt it starting with physical facilities, power, recabling the entire network, heavy moves into virtualization, building a SAN, and generally rebuilding every aspect of my environment. I'm still knee-deep in this, and working way too much to have time to contribute to Cacti as I intended. The good news is I've got a really kickass environment built that I can test all kinds of cacti monitoring against.
Hopefully by early next year I'll find myself with enough time to start contributing as I'd hoped.
Thank you all so much for this great project, I hope my feedback is useful!
Cheers
Ross
