I suggest dstat over vmstat, it has color coded output and abbreviates units automatically. It's easy to add columns or monitor specific devices or interfaces.

I suggest dstat over vmstat, it has color coded output and abbreviates units automatically. It's easy to add columns or monitor specific devices or interfaces. http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/dstat/ http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/dstat/ I suggest OpenNMS as a cacti and nagios alternative. It eliminates most of the manual configuration. It can automatically detect nodes and services and if you give it SNMP information it can monitor specifics of each machine. I've used it to monitor hundreds of machines but it can be resource intensive. http://www.opennms.org/ http://www.opennms.org/ iftop is also a nice lightweight alternative to iptraf and helps track down bandwidth heavy processes and connections. http://ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/ http://ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/