[erlang-questions] app for watching/monitoring other erlang nodes

[Jesper Louis Andersen]

On Nov 20, 2012, at 1:46 PM, Vlad Dumitrescu <vladdu55@REDACTED> wrote:

> Yes, you're right, snmp matches the description, but it feels a bit too heavy for me. I will read about it, maybe it's not true. I would like to have the monitored nodes without any specific application running, just answering to some RPCs once in a while.

The SNMP agent parts are not that hard to use. Basically you define a MIB file which exposes the values your system supports. Then you define a mapping from the MIB file to Erlang functions, or to a mnesia table. The SNMP subsystem then responds on requests and calls the appropriate Erlang code, wraps things in ASN.1 and so on.

What makes it "heavy" is that SNMP itself is rather heavy. And that there is quite some configuration needed in order to expose these values to the rest of the world. The advantage is, however, that once you have set it up properly, it is extremely easy to add more metrics and probes to your node. Erlang/OTP also provides a couple of  things itself for monitoring. Including "what process uses the most memory and how much" etc.

Jesper Louis Andersen
  Erlang Solutions Ltd., Copenhagen