Zond vs. Realtime?

N3NCY · Post by **N3NCY** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 3:57 pm

Zond vs. Realtime?

What is the story here?
Which plug-in came first?
Is one of these plug-ins built based on the other one?
Are they both actively being developed?

Zond at v0.34c
http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?t=24934

Realtime at 0.34
http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?t=26662

Dazed and confused...

cigamit · Post by **cigamit** » Sun Sep 07, 2008 2:27 pm

Zond: Written by a third party with a Java applet which is closed source. Also has some issues.

Real-time: Written by a Cacti developer, no Java, all open source, no issues so far.

mcutting · Post by **mcutting** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 1:30 am

Zond came out first, and seems to enjoy a fairly large following. However, I experienced issues with this, and yearned for something along these lines, but open source.

Along came Realtime - originally written by txprog, then re-written by TheWitness. Works great in my setup, and I've used it to track mail queues etc when we've had issues in the past.

Realtime is by far superior.

johnrembo · Post by **johnrembo** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:53 am

mcutting wrote:Zond came out first, and seems to enjoy a fairly large following. However, I experienced issues with this, and yearned for something along these lines, but open source.

Along came Realtime - originally written by txprog, then re-written by TheWitness. Works great in my setup, and I've used it to track mail queues etc when we've had issues in the past.

Realtime is by far superior.

As an author of ZOND i'd like to comment "Realtime superiority"

1st - let me mention that theoretically these two plugins should exchange names. ZOND is much closer to real-time monitoring (refresh of 1 sec. and below isn't a limit) than RealTime is. And, during 5 seconds (this is minimal refresh rate of RealTime afaik) a lot can happen!
You will be surprised, but ZOND's 1st realization was nearly the same as RealTime is now. It is sad, but when 50 users were monitoring live traffic simultaneously (several windows each!)- this "unoficial rrd-png generator , screen refresher and resource-eater" version of ZOND" simply failed to prove itself. It was completely rewritten and that is how current ZOND was born. Assuming it was approx 1.5 years ago - a lot has changed since (for example rrdtool performance - rrdtool based realtime plugin isn't so slow as it would have been then as well as net-snmp changes allows us to see normal traffic curves every sec. with zond again).

My suggestion to those who cant decide between two:
RealTime get's medal for it's simplicity at both ends - client and server, windows and linux/unix.
Zond get's medal for it's performance and accurateness (does it's best on unix, in cacti environments without difficult graph templates).

ps: can't understand what's so wrong about that closed-source java applet. What would you do with it if it was open?

Howie · Post by **Howie** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 1:53 pm

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a thread on the Cisco-NSP list that (on some Cisco at least) the SNMP process doesn't update the counters more often than every 10 seconds or so... I'll see if I can find that.

cigamit · Post by **cigamit** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 2:00 pm

johnrembo wrote:ps: can't understand what's so wrong about that closed-source java applet. What would you do with it if it was open?

To begin with, I was more commenting on the Java than the Closed Source. I just absolutely dislike Java, its akin to VB to me. I prefer GPL applications, because I can tweak and change them to my hearts content. Cacti is GPL, if I am going to be running plugins inside of Cacti I would like them to follow that lead and open their source. If I am going to be distributing applications via my CD, I would prefer the same.

As for if it was open, to start with I would fix the data display on the bottom to look more like the exact display on the graph. The Min/Max/Average numbers are also difficult to read as they are jumbled together with no spaces.

Did the problem in Zond ever get fixed where it just not poll any data for specific graphs? I haven't really used it since that bug, as 50% of my graphs just wouldn't work with it.

As far as the 5 sec limit of realtime, a simple 1 line change can make it 1 sec if necessary.

Post by **browniebraun** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:12 pm

IMO Zond looks really good, but ...

... it declasses itself with the requirement of java virtual machine on every PC. In a global company where every PC works with the same standard load and a typical Cacti user has no admin rights, you've to work with that what is given. And we've to ensure that everybody of our users can use every feature we offer to them. BTW it's common practice that polling machines has to be in a separated network.

Best regards
-Andreas-

mcutting · Post by **mcutting** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 1:29 am

johnrembo wrote:
mcutting wrote:Zond came out first, and seems to enjoy a fairly large following. However, I experienced issues with this, and yearned for something along these lines, but open source.

Along came Realtime - originally written by txprog, then re-written by TheWitness. Works great in my setup, and I've used it to track mail queues etc when we've had issues in the past.

Realtime is by far superior

As an author of ZOND i'd like to comment "Realtime superiority" ;)
1st - let me mention that theoretically these two plugins should exchange names. ZOND is much closer to real-time monitoring (refresh of 1 sec. and below isn't a limit) than RealTime is. And, during 5 seconds (this is minimal refresh rate of RealTime afaik) a lot can happen!
You will be surprised, but ZOND's 1st realization was nearly the same as RealTime is now. It is sad, but when 50 users were monitoring live traffic simultaneously (several windows each!)- this "unoficial rrd-png generator , screen refresher and resource-eater" version of ZOND" simply failed to prove itself. It was completely rewritten and that is how current ZOND was born. Assuming it was approx 1.5 years ago - a lot has changed since (for example rrdtool performance - rrdtool based realtime plugin isn't so slow as it would have been then as well as net-snmp changes allows us to see normal traffic curves every sec. with zond again).

My suggestion to those who cant decide between two:
RealTime get's medal for it's simplicity at both ends - client and server, windows and linux/unix.
Zond get's medal for it's performance and accurateness (does it's best on unix, in cacti environments without difficult graph templates).

ps: can't understand what's so wrong about that closed-source java applet. What would you do with it if it was open?

The comments I made were based on my experience with Zond, and were an opinion only. I do not take part in these forums to put someone else's work down.

Zond still has a lot of potential, and based on the amount of people wishing to use the product, it is still very popular. However, I agree with Jimmy - the rest of Cacti is GPL, along with the other fantastic plugins that our organisation would find very difficult to function without in terms of monitoring, and an "early warning system" (take MONITOR and SYSLOG for an example).

I needed to prove that we had an isse with our mail queue, and tried Zond. This killed the Apache service running under Windows, and I couldn't get it to graph half of my nodes.

I had to perform another test, and this time, chose Realtime. This worked pretty much out of the box, and I was able to change a few bits I didn't think fitted the rest of Cacti properly.

Again, my comment above were an opinion, and nothing else :)

johnrembo · Post by **johnrembo** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:25 am

Gentelmen,
I respect your thoughts and opinions and would like to ask if there's a point to continue ZOND at all? I'm a very busy man, I know ZOND was unkept for nearly half a year, but assuming the fact i've just finished fully automated EMC SMARTS synchronization with Cacti - I might find some time to fix those graph template issues once and for all. And still - JRE sucks - we all know that, half of networking hardware vendors doesn't support 1sec snmp counter refresh, latest devices are even worse - latest high-end ALCATEL's core routers do not support SNMP at all (xml+ftp+compaq-flash), new cacti release is comming which most-likely will break ZOND apart - so is there a point to waste a time(lots of time) for having two plugins which do the same?

Howie · Post by **Howie** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:25 am

Actually, Realtime doesn't work for me, and (as with many plugins) the answer may or may not be in a great big 8 page thread lasting 6 months. It goes on the pile of things that might be nice, if they worked or if I had time to debug, along with Mactrack .

Post by **browniebraun** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 1:02 pm

John,
I only wanted to explain why we can not use Zond in our company. In my opinion there are a lot of members who favor your plugin.
As an engineer, husband and father I'm also not able to spend too much time with the development of my plugin.
ReportIt was the third or the fourth (?) reporting plugin for Cacti, but I don't think that its development is a waste of time. Same applies to the development of Zond. Chin up!

Best regards
-Andreas-

chrisgapske · Post by **chrisgapske** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 1:36 pm

I think Zond is a great application..

Neither it or Realtime will work for me right now for some reason but .. I like Zond and have it is a very nice app..

Yeah Java Sux o well. It can always be ported and updated if that is the path you take.

I just want to thank you John for Creating the product and making it work.

Wish mine did but I am not sure where the break is..

Post by **TheWitness** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 1:58 pm

Ditto's for "chin-up". I should spend a few months fixing all the broken things that I have written. It's back to that work/no-work/family balance that makes me less and less online and more and more confused(ing)

TheWitness

johnrembo · Post by **johnrembo** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 5:12 am

hi,

to those who asked...

ps: that was my first java app - accept it towardly :]

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Zond vs. Realtime?

Zond vs. Realtime?

zond goes GPLv2 :]

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