Best way to store server statistics

[prudens]

What's the best way to store statistics of say 100 different servers? Just basic statistics like how many users are online on each server.

 

[trq]

Depends entirely on what your planning on doing with these statistics.

[prudens]

hmm, something like otlist.eu

 

How should I store my statistics?

[roopurt18]

otslist.eu appears to be a single statistics page that receives updates from many servers.

 

In that case otslist.eu probably has a web services or other page that allows each server to periodically post data about it's status.

 

The stats themselves are probably stored in a database or flat file.

 

What you're trying to accomplish is really simple in principle.

 

1) Create your site, such as mystats.com

 

2) Create a PHP file: mystats.com/receive_stats.php

This script receives a POST submission of stats data from any of the reporting servers and adds it to the database.

 

3) Create a PHP file: mystats.com/display_stats.php

This page displays the stored stats.

 

4) Create a PHP file: send_stats.php

This is a PHP script that is installed on each server and scheduled as a cron entry.  The job of this script is to query the server statistics and then POST them (using cURL or HttpRequest) to mystats.com/receive_stats.php

 

This is exactly the same as creating a form handling script except you don't actually need an HTML form and instead of users submitting the data it's automated scripts.

 

It's also a good idea to store a unique name-key pair for each server so they can identify themselves and not mangle other servers in the stats listing.

[prudens]

Wow thank you for that comprehensive guide.

 

 

Do you know where I can find a script that uses GD to graph the statistics?

[roopurt18]

I know there are a number of solutions out there, but I've not produced any graphs myself.

 

Depending on the level of complexity you're willing to deal with and the amount of control you have over the server generating the graph images, you can also look into Java solutions.  There are ways to make PHP and Java play nicely together.  I would really only attempt that as a last resort though as it can cause quite a few headaches.