I have a bunch of VMs that I need to monitor in real-time. For all nodes I need to watch host parameters like load, network usage and free memory; and for some I need app-specific metrics too, like redis (some vars from the output of INFO command) and nginx (like requests/sec, avg. request time). Ideally I'd also like to track some parameters from the custom apps that run on these node too.

These parameters should get tracked as a bunch of line charts on a dashboard.

I checked out graphite and it looks suitable (although the UX and aesthetics looks like it needs some love).

But setting up and maintaining graphite looks to be a pain, esp. since we don't have a full-time person just for this. Are there any alternatives? Or at least something that is simpler to setup and will scale? Reasonable paid services are also ok.