RRDtool Training at LISA 2009

RRDtool Training at LISA 2009
http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa09/training/tutonefile.html#m6
http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa09/training/tutonefile.html#m9

Tobias Oetiker is the creator of RRDTool, an open source high performance data logging and graphing system for time series data. It is commonly used in such monitoring tools such as Groundwork, Cacti, and Zenoss, and other popular open source monitoring suites. Tobias Oetiker will be giving training at LISA 2009 this November. Tobias discusses his upcoming RRDTool training course and RRDtool on this USENIX Blog exclusive

Q: What will attendees be able to do with RRDTool after this training?

Tobias Oetiker: The class is structured into two half day classes. The morning class is more introductory in nature, while the afternoon class goes in deep with lots of sample code being discussed.

After the morning class I expect attendees to have a good grasp as to what RRDtool can do for them. Many monitoring applications depend on RRDtool for data storage and graphing services. When they get back home they will be motivated to try out twiddling the RRD related knobs of their favorite monitoring application to make it really shine.

The afternoon class will provide a better understanding of the way RRDtool works internally. They will know how data can be 'massaged' prior to displaying. They will also be getting a good look at the much talked about and little understood Holt Winters Aberrant Behavior Detection facility, which enables RRDtool to predict the future.

Q: What class should a RRDtool user attend, the Beginner or the Advanced course, or are they meant to be taken together?

Tobias Oetiker: The two classes are only related by topic. I have ordered them with the beginner’s class in the morning, and the more advanced one in the afternoon so that they can be taken one after the other. However, this is not required. Also in the morning class, I will put more emphasis on questions of design and politics associated with RRDtool and monitoring, while the afternoon class will be more detailed on a technical level.

Q: What is the coolest thing you have seen done with RRDtool?

Tobias Oetiker: Well there are the technical solutions, people come up with for raising the throughput of RRDtool to new heights, some of which we will see in the upcoming 1.4 release of RRDtool. And then I also keep marveling at cool color schemes and graphing compositions some users send me for the RRDtool gallery. Even though RRDtool does not have all that many options for influencing the layout of the graphs, the beauty and variety of the material I get, keeps taking my breath away. I will be talking about some of the tricks involved in both of my classes.

Q: Is RRDTool limited to only network monitoring or server monitoring applications?

Tobias Oetiker: No not at all. RRDtool is a generic time series data logger and graphing application. So whenever you have a device or a program giving you a continuous stream of numeric data values then RRDtool is ideal for you. Since it can be run from a simple shell script and uses very little system resources, it is quick and simple to deploy. The RRDtool data files have a constant size and will thus never swamp your disk, even when the tool is run for a long time. (Sounds impossible? Come to the class and learn how this works!)

Q: If a user wants to build a custom monitoring application, will they be able to do this as a result of taking this training?

Tobias Oetiker: If they have some scripting skills they certainly should be, especially after the second class. Time permitting I will conclude the second class by code-walking a tiny little monitoring application complete with data gathering script and on-line graphing capability.

Official RRDTool Training

RRDTool First Steps: http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa09/training/tutonefile.html#m6

RRDTool Advanced Topics: http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa09/training/tutonefile.html#m9

RRDTool Official Web Site: http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/