Hi, I have a very huge network that is divided country-wise in PRTG. Lets suppose there are 100 sensors in each country and I want to fetch the combined bandwidth consumption of all these 100 servers at any particular moment. How is this possible ??

To further explain the problem, Lets say I have 02 sensors in a country (Sensor A and Sensor B). Sensor A has 500GB Bandwidth consumption in the past week and Sensor B has 300GB Bandwidth consumption in the past week, Now I can add them manually them and the total comes 800GB for the total consumption of the country. But when I have around 100 or more servers then adding them manually is not a viable option. So there must be a feature through which I can monitor the bandwidth of multiple sensors at one time as a combined bandwidth at any given time.

Looking forward to an early response from your side. Thanks,

Article Comments

Dear Sameerkk

Data aggregation is possible with the factory sensor. However, the aggregation is not intended to add values of hundreds of sensors. While there is no official limit, I recommend to not use more than 30 sources for an aggregation.

Another downside is that the factory has to be configured by formulas which need the object IDs.

As an alternative you can export the historic data of PRTG to an MSSQL database using the Data Extractor. This process can take hours, but after the export you can do any queries on that database using any SQL-capable reporting tool.


Oct, 2015 - Permalink

Hi,

I am extremely thankful to you for the reply. It seems to be working wonderfully for me. May I please know one more thing, Can I combine multiple factory sensors and fetch the data similar to normal sensors ?? For Ex., Can I combine around 30 factory sensors for aggregate bandwidth or do you suggest something else for this ??

Kind Regards, Sameer Ali Khan.


Oct, 2015 - Permalink

Dear Sameer

Factory sensors cannot be used as source for other factory sensors.

I am sorry, PRTG does not cover the scenario to aggregate the values of so many sensors.


Oct, 2015 - Permalink

Hi,

Oh Okie, You have been greatly helpful to me. If there is any other option then please let me know. I have already worked on both the ideas provided by you and it seems to be working. But if I want combined bandwidth then do you recommend any other option ?? By using this sensor I am able to bring the network from around 500-600 sensors to 100 sensors. But now I want the aggregate bandwidth of these all. Even if a single sensor cannot help then I can add multiple ones that show the combined bandwidth. Please let me know if anything else is possible.

Thanks for all the help that you have provided :)

Regards, Sameer Ali Khan.


Oct, 2015 - Permalink

Sameer

The sensor factory works on the fly. That means, the factory sensor has no historic data of its own. Access to the factory sensor always accesses the data of all source sensors.

This is the reason why you cannot use multiple factories to reduce the system load.

The only way to really show combined traffic is a non-realtime option. You could either use the aforementioned data extractor, or query the historic data with a custom script. I am sorry, we don't provide ready-made scripts for this, just the API documentation.

The script could add all values and generate an output. However this takes some time. PRTG accepts only up to five historic data API calls per seconds, the execution of one such call can take much longer than 0.2 seconds, further limiting the throughput.

In more detail, the solution would be like this:

  • The script first uses the API to generate a list of all object IDs in question, for example by a sensor tag.
  • Then the script determines the desired time frame and queries the historic data of each object ID, one by one, with a nice delay between each call to prevent system overload.
  • The script evaluates the data and adds the total traffic, then outputs it.

The downside of this solution is that the result is not visible in PRTG itself. And it is a rather complex, custom solution, requiring custom programming and learning to use the PRTG API.


Oct, 2015 - Permalink

Hi,

I really appreciate and thank you for your time. This is really helpful. I shall contact the my other development teams to fetch this data for me through API's. Thanks,

Regards, Sameer Ali Khan.


Oct, 2015 - Permalink