collectd

What collectd is

collectd is a free, open-source daemon that periodically collects system and application performance metrics. It gathers data from operating systems, applications, logfiles, and external devices, then stores metrics or makes them available over a network. These statistics can help monitor systems, spot performance bottlenecks, and anticipate future system load. Written in C, collectd is designed for performance and portability, including use on systems without a scripting language or cron daemon. The project says it includes more than 100 plugins and optimizations for handling hundreds of thousands of metrics. It can write to RRD files, but does not generate graphs from them; its monitoring is limited to simple threshold checks. Documentation includes manpages, a getting started guide, specialized material, and a plugin list in the source README. Source downloads are GZip or BZip2 compressed tar archives. For Windows, the project points to SSC Serv, a native application that collects and dispatches performance data using the collectd network protocol.