Measure memory usage of a distributed application

Question

What is the best way to measure memory usage of a distributed application?

I'm not sure if using ps on each machine is the best approach on this problem -- the saner the solution, the better (:

P.S.: The application is in c++, and is to be executed using linux.

Answer 1

Install one of several really good open source enterprise datacenter monitoring tools. Good ones are:

• Hyperic
• Nagios

These are terribly easy to install and give you not only memory but also any other system property you could shake a stick at.