Problem Solving and Computer Graphics

As a SysAdmin I have to use command line utilities and scripts to collect and interpret data from various servers. Sometimes I need to analyse reports generated by some other systems/tools about my servers. A lot of numbers, charts, stats but all mainly static. But what if we take a step further and combine these numbers with geometric primitives into something useful trying to give them as well some motion... ? Say you have mpstat numbers and you would like to plug in all these numbers and play them somehow to listen to your system... something like a  mp3 player but in this case you will play some CPU metrics.

Can we combine problem solving with geometry and help our life to understand more quickly a problem and visualize a performance issue, lets say ? We might be able to do that. At the moment we dont have proper tools and ways of looking into all these numbers...

Welcome Problem Solving and Computer Graphics ! I started a small project called cpuplayer after some talks and ideas shared with Dr. Neil Gunther. Some parts were inspired by the Apdex Performance Index, some by the Barycentric Visualizer and some other by real support cases.

The player is implemented in C using OpenGL to be simple and efficient. Im not on AJAX/Flash based solutions nor a social network type of person where you spend a heck of your private time clicking instead of going to see a movie or read a book - for me it is important to pass commands to a machine and let the machine do the work and return that information and help me understand what I have to do to fix a problem quickly without spending long hours in front of a terminal.

Why even bother to use such utilities ? Simple put it: better visualize your workload or better understand whats going on by seeing the thing ! Below you can see cpuplayer playing data from a 8 CPU server, every 5 seconds. At the moment this is a simple screenshot, added to this page, but for WEB we are working to add animated gif support so in future you can see it all, like a movie:) 

The current version it is still a prototype, being heavily under work and testing.