My previous post about getting the temperatures of disks connected to an Areca raid array already noted that MRTG can only handle two datasources in a single graph.

With 5 disks in a system, this would force me to create 3 graphs, or 1 graph with the temperatures of the 4 disks connected to the RAID array averaged into a single line.

I’ve always wanted to move from MRTG to RRDtool, because RRDtool can handle multiple datasources per graph, and has more options.

However, I found RRDtool very hard to configure compared to MRTG. So I went looking for an alternative.

Cacti is a front-end for RRDtool, which makes it easier to create nice graphs. If you just want to graph routers, it’s even easier to configure than MRTG. But if you like to have custom stats, like the Areca HDD temperatures, it takes a little more work.
Cacti has some nice guides on how to create graphs and new input methods on their site, but even with those it took me quite some time to create my first graph.

By now I’ve migrated all my graphs from my personal MRTG page to Cacti