Temperature monitoring

[rodneyST]

How do I setup a system that graphs the temperature of things like routers, switches, firewall, etc.

I saw something called zenoss that makes nice graphs and users login to a web interface. What is everyone's take on this?

[Webmaster]

You will need to use something like Zenoss that will poll whatever network device via SNMP to gather the data you want. I use Cacti, and most hosting shops or other IT departments use it as well. The problem with doing so is the SNMP data can be hard to collect or even process.

Cacti has templates for such things if the device you are using is fairly popular. The Cacti community does a fairly good job of working on templates and developement of the software. The only downfall is that they are limited on resources and because of that, they are very slow to release new versions or update things that are broken.

There are many templates out there for things like Cisco routers, switches, and other devices. Some day I will get around to doing a big tutorial on Cacti. Until then, good luck.