In this article I will describe how you can monitor multiple systems with munin. munin produces nifty little graphics about nearly every aspect of your server (load average, memory usage, CPU usage, MySQL throughput, eth0 traffic, etc.) without much configuration. I will install the munin client on all systems that are to be monitored (including the munin server itself); the munin clients will then report to the munin server.

In this article I will describe how you can monitor your Mandriva 2008.0 server with munin and monit. munin produces nifty little graphics about nearly every aspect of your server (load average, memory usage, CPU usage, MySQL throughput, eth0 traffic, etc.) without much configuration, whereas monit checks the availability of services like Apache, MySQL, Postfix and takes the appropriate action such as a restart if it finds a service is not behaving as expected. The combination of the two gives you full monitoring: graphic that lets you recognize current or upcoming problems, and a watchdog that ensures the availability of the monitored services.