[Orca-users] Re: Some questions about Orca.

[Blair Zajac]

Leewa,

Answers below.

Leewa wrote:
> 
> To all,
> 
>     I'm somewhat a beginner/intermediate Systems
> Adminsistrator, so bear with me as far as my questions
> go.  I've got some other questions about Orca, but
> first the configuration I'm using is listed below.
> 
> Version: Orca 0.27b2
> CFG Version: orcallator.cfg 1.32
> SE Version: orcallator.se 1.32
> 
> Using "default" configuration.  Running orcallator.se
> and orca on the same system.  RRD files are stored on
> local system's disk.  HTML files are stored on NFS
> mounted disks.  These disks are local to our internal
> Apache web server which hosts the resulting HTML
> files.
> 
> I'm not sure if this is the setup I will use, but it
> doesn't seem to put much of a load on the host and
> seems like it works well.  I got this idea from a
> previous poster named Allen Eastwood.  I may
> centralize the RRD data collection, but I'm not sure
> yet.
> 
> Questions:
> ----------
> 1. If I use the default setup that I have (RRD files
> locally stored, HTML files on web server disk),
> roughly, how much disk space I would be using over a
> period of a day, month, year?  So far, the stuff in
> the RRD directory and orcallator directory under my
> /usr/local/var is only 4 Meg.  This is after running
> orca for about 4 days now.

The RRD files are constant in size.  This is one of the great things
about them.  Of course, as you get more hosts, you get more RRD files,
but this is a different issue.

You do have to worry about the orcallator-* files.  I would do a simple
extrapolation on the sizes you are seeing, since the sizes of the files
orcallator.se generates depends upon the number of disks, filesystems,
ethernet interfaces, etc, so its best to use the actual machines you
have to determine this.

> 
> 2. Does orca have options that will "roll off" some of
> the data or would I need to create a sperate crontab
> entry to remove older RRD/HTML files after a certain
> period of time?  I'm just trying to avoid filling up a
> filesystem.

You would want to roll the orcallator-* files to tape or permanent
storage, the HTML and RRD files should not increase in size over time.
The generated PNGs may increase in size slightly over time as there is
more data presented in the PNG, but I don't think this would be a big
deal.

> 
> 3. Is using the "defaults" in the orcallator.cfg and
> orcallator.se file good enough for most system?  They
> seem to be with regards to my setup here.

Yes.  The orcallator.cfg plot's mostly everything that is measured, but
there are a few things missing (I don't remember what they are off the top
of my head).

> 
> 4. How easy is it for me to change the layout of the
> created HTML pages that are generated?  Is this mainly
> in the orcallator.cfg file?

Yes, what's in the orcallator.cfg is easily changed, but if you want major
structural changes, then this is in the source code.  What kind of changes
are you looking for?

> 
> Any info would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Blair, BTW, your orca program is really neat.  Never
> seen anything like it and it's a great thing to have
> to show your management who are concerned about
> hardware utilization.  Thanks for having this program.

Thanks a lot!

Best,
Blair

> 
> Wayne Lee
> Systems Administrator
> Amerada Hess Corp.
> **************************************************************************
> "UNIX_IS_ user friendly, its just picky about who its
> friends are."
> **************************************************************************

-- 
Blair Zajac <blair at orcaware.com> - Perl & sysadmin services for hire
Web and OS performance plots - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/