Cacti isn't free! WHAT?

[inetquestion]

I was recently informed i couldn't pursue working on cacti or mysql because my company doesn't approve of these products. They aren't opposed to buying oracle (however they have no budget) and they really have no solution for monitoring which even comes close to what cacti can do. They don't like php either, but thats another issue. I'm losing my mind dealing with all the hoops to save these people money. Has anyone ever had to write an exception document to justify using cacti? Is so would you mind sharing it?


As an aside if you were to package cacti and all the dependencies up into a nice package and sell it for $50,000 that would probably work too.

[Howie]

I was recently informed i couldn't pursue working on cacti or mysql because my company doesn't approve of these products. They aren't opposed to buying oracle (however they have no budget) and they really have no solution for monitoring which even comes close to what cacti can do. They don't like php either, but thats another issue. I'm losing my mind dealing with all the hoops to save these people money. Has anyone ever had to write an exception document to justify using cacti? Is so would you mind sharing it?


As an aside if you were to package cacti and all the dependencies up into a nice package and sell it for $50,000 that would probably work too.

I would guess that lack of big-S Support is part of the objection?

Maybe something like http://www.groundworkopensource.com would help? GWOS doesn't include Cacti, but possibly someone else does something similar that does... their product is basically an integrated collection of open source packages, plus full commercial-style support.

My understanding of this type of objection is that one-man operations offering to support things just doesn't cut it, sadly.

[BSOD2600]

Just a "me too" post.

The Oregon education system, prevents institutions from using any open source software. Linux, Cacti, whatever. Pretty sad.

[polletj]

Before I started with Cacti, i tried some other very expensive tool.

On one day our main switches in the lab went down, and everything stayed green

Even theire support was nihil and answers that even my son wouldn't give.

One week later the complete database crashed and that was the day it was put in the garbage can..

Then came Cacti, it had it set up , played around with it for a month or so and when I was confidend I have faced them with the fact of a running system.

It even detected till now 6 major loops within 15 min of response time.

They are convinced overhere.

It's a great tool and you can add youre own needs also....

Cheers

my 50 eurocents

[rony]

I would guess that lack of big-S Support is part of the objection?

Maybe something like http://www.groundworkopensource.com would help? GWOS doesn't include Cacti, but possibly someone else does something similar that does... their product is basically an integrated collection of open source packages, plus full commercial-style support.

My understanding of this type of objection is that one-man operations offering to support things just doesn't cut it, sadly.

Support is always an objection by major corporations. Sometimes you can get past that and sometimes you can't. I know of 2 major car manufacturers that have gotten past that fact and are using Cacti.

No one thing, open source or not, should rely on one person, the "hit by bus" factor is to high there. I hate that argument, open source or not, you need to have multiple people that understand it and can support it.

FYI, Groundworks Open Source will support Cacti, they have in the past. I have personally, along with all the other Cacti Developers, visited there location and met with them. While I'm not explicitly advocating them, I would not rule them out as a option for you situation.

BTW, I don't like the title of this thread...

[efeinsmith]

Err, As the primary engineer on the Groundwork NMS project (which includes and packages Cacti with all of its dependencies and a bunch more useful stuff...), I'd say just get that, and you'd come in way below your $50k mark, with support, training and documentation.

Emmanuel Feinsmith
Groundwork Open Source.

[Rael]

I encountered the exact same obstacles at a car manufacturer I once worked for. In the end I made a risky choice of doing the right thing and asking for forgiveness after the fact.

They're currently intertwined in a monitoring system that has never once proven effective or able to complete the objectives it sells it's self on.

We were promised Perf metrics within a year after purchase, it's 4 and still no dice yet every meeting yields "in 9 months we're gonna give that to you"

I finally just ignored them and did it myself and now they even agree, that they can't be as nimble and agile as the Cacti instance I stood up.

They're still using it today after I've left and are continuing to support and modify the platform to fit their needs.

Cacti works. Those who still oppose the GNU and OSS tree's are obsolete in the field of IT.....


And likely managers.

[gandalf]

Guess what ... sometimes it's _good_ to hear that our work is not a complete waste of time ...
Reinhard

[Howie]

Guess what ... sometimes it's _good_ to hear that our work is not a complete waste of time ...
Reinhard

Very true. Talking to you guys at 3.CCC.eu the other weekend has got me working on Weathermap again, for example, and a couple of other new ideas.

[TheWitness]

I like the title of the post, it caught my attention anyway. We continue to enhance and bring the best of what we can to you all.

TheWitness

ps. Send the $50k this way

[inetquestion]

I ended up doing it and asking for forgiveness as the other guy mentioned.

Since then we have had an implementation of Tivoli, Wily and Mercury come and go by the wayside. All three promised to do all of the above and then some. In the end they all got shelved because they were too complex, required too many resources, and the people who were suppose to manage it were not properly trained to keep it running. However my cacti instance is still purring along, and is a favorite bookmark of every manager who nay-sayed along the way.

Funny how things work out...

[rony]

From skunk works to production!

[gigglesworth]

Guess what ... sometimes it's _good_ to hear that our work is not a complete waste of time ...

Cacti is a spectacular product. It is not a waste of time.

Thank you very much for all of your hard work and continued maintenance of Cacti, Weathermap and all those other tools and the tutorials and documentation.

I'm in the exact opposite position of the parent poster. In many companies, it's extremely difficult to get a budget to purchase any sort of monitoring tools. "They who control the budget" don't always understand that these tools save time and result in faster more stable systems. Cacti saves money.

I wish I could get my employers to donate money to the cause, and I wish I had more time to donate to the project. With my next job, maybe I can.

I think Cacti will become even more popular after the 0.8.8 release. The inclusion of the Plugin Architecture will open up whole new worlds for your users-- I know plenty of Cacti administrators who don't know anything about the Cacti Plugins.

So again, thank you. Cacti is a great use of time.

-= Stefan

[chummers]

Hi there,

I have been looking at cacti for the last six months or so.. and think I better express some observations...

Most IT managers do not allow for a monitoring budget at all, so a cacti/nagios solution is great for that scenario.

Even if you do have a budget, cacti is on par (maybe better? ) with nagios, and that is known as the best monitoring solution out there.

Cacti will do what you want it to do, agreed you must put some work in, but you do get what you want, rather then what companies 'think' you want.

The actual support that you get from the cacti guys is fantastic ,and much better and faster responses than some of the commercial counterparts..

Any company that refueses open source software on their sweeping generalisms need their head looking at especially at these difficult times..

Note to all the developers (and I probably speak for all who frequent here..)
Keep up the good work, your efforts are appreciated, your support is great and your advice is well recieved..

There are the the things that are not often said, but credit where it is due..

[locutus233]

Cacti and Nagios are both monitoring tools but have different purposes. Nagios is a monitoring tool with alerts designed for real time monitoring. Cacti is for historical reporting of performance. Nagios doesn't have this integrated without a third party plugin. I installed PNP on my nagios to extract the performance data from nagios and build graphs but cacti is much more refined and more detailed than pnp in this respect.