I like munin (
http://munin.projects.linpro.no/)
It's easy to install and runs ok inside openvz environments. makes nice plots using rrdtool and cron. can be viewed with a webbrowser. it's a client/server system. just install the clients on the nodes and have one other computer with network access run the server which pulls all the data and makes the graphs (5 min interval, so short spikes go unnoticed)
they have a demo site:
http://munin.ping.uio.no/
additional plugins can be found here:
http://muninexchange.projects.linpro.no/
the standard plugins cover stuff like:
cpu usage, memory usage, network traffic (works with venet0:0 aliases), and so forth