Unfortunately the data can only be scraped from telnet or HTTP, as there's no other mechanism to collect it. This makes it a more complex process to collect. But, there's a bucketload of information you can get. RRD/Munin is useful only to a point, and it doesn't necessarily let you drill down to the detail you always want, but I find it the most useful because you can easily spot trends and problems, and munin plugins are very simple, quick and easy to write.
Cheers!