Chapter 1 Overview
Components of SNMP RTM with MRTG and RRDTool
Cisco SCA BB SNMP Real Time Monitoring User Guide
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Components of SNMP RTM with MRTG and RRDTool
Following are the components of an MRTG / RRDTool monitoring system:
• MRTG is a script that collects SNMP data from monitored devices. It monitors SNMP
network devices and stores the retrieved data in a database. It is written in Perl and works on
Unix/Linux and Windows.
MRTG is free software licensed under the Gnu GPL. It requires the following:
• Perl
• RRDTool to persist data and to generate high quality graphs
The MRTG CFG file lists the SNMP OIDs of the SNMP counters that MRTG should poll.
• RRDTool stores data and generates charts. RRDTool uses Round Robin Database to store
time-series data, and generates charts using this data.
RRDTool is a free software licensed under the Gnu GPL. It requires the following:
• A web server to delegate user requests to the RRDTool's CGI interpreter
RRDTool CGI files implement the report web pages. These files are executable scripts
residing on the web server. When you request a report web page, RRDTool executes the script
and dynamically creates the updated chart.
• Cron (or any other scheduling service) periodically invokes MRTG to poll SNMP counters
from monitored devices.
• Apache (or any other web server) serves the charts to the user web browser.
• Cisco Service Control platforms support MIBs counters that are monitored by MRTG.
The following diagram illustrates the components of a real-time SNMP monitoring system in
action:
Figure
1-1: Components of a Real Time SNMP Monitoring System