Whats the most widespread monitoring protocol/library?

Question

Hi,

I need to expose certain monitoring statistics from my application and I'm wondering what the most widespread framework or protocol is for doing this?

Answer 1

SNMP is widely used and a standard protocol. It's implemented in computers, routers, hubs, printers and practically anything connected to the net. Although it's called the SImple Network Management Protocol it's not restricted to network management.

It's an open standard and consequently there are a huge array of management/monitoring solutions, from simple shell scripts and libraries up to enterprise monitoring suites (e.g. HP Openview).

You can query synchronously for data or receive events (in SNMP-speak, traps). Each device will report a common set of data (relating mainly to the network status of that device) plus enterprise-specific data (e.g. CPU usage, printer status etc.).

It runs over UDP, and message consistency is a responsibility of the implementing library. This is a little unusual, but it's designed to operate even when the network is not functioning correctly (e.g. flooded with traffic/misconfigured etc.) and decisions about retry strategies, timeouts etc. need to be taken at the application level (unlike TCP).