Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide

Table of Contents

Cacti 0.8Beginner's Guide

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What is Cacti?

System architecture of Cacti

Cacti is more than performance measurement

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action – heading

What just happened?

Pop quiz – heading

Have a go hero – heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Installing Cacti

Preparing the system—basic prerequisites

Web server

PHP

MySQL database

NET-SNMP package

Installing Cacti on a CentOS 5 system

Preparing the system

Time for action – installing the missing packages

What just happened?

Downloading and extracting Cacti

Time for action – downloading Cacti

What just happened?

Creating the database

Time for action – creating the database

What just happened?

Configuring Cacti

Time for action – configuring Cacti

What just happened?

Creating the poller cron entry and Cacti's system user

Time for action – creating the poller's cron entry and Cacti's system account

What just happened?

Installing the Spine poller

Time for action – installing Spine

What just happened?

Differences between source and APT/Yum installations

Have a go hero – remote server for database hosting

Installing Cacti on a Windows system

The community-built Windows Installer

Time for action – starting the Windows setup

What just happened?

Installing the Spine poller under Windows

Upgrading Cacti

Time for action – upgrading Cacti

What just happened?

Using Cacti for the first time

Time for action – configuring Cacti

What just happened?

The Cacti web interface explained

The Console tab

Create section

Management section

Collection methods section

Templates section

Import/export section

Configuration section

Utilities section

The Graphs tab

Before we continue

Pop quiz – a few questions about Chapter 1

Summary

2. Using Graphs to Monitor Networks and Devices

An introduction to Cacti graphs and the RRDtool

Creating graphs with the RRDtool

Basic RRDtool graph creation

Advanced RRDtool graph creation

Adding a label and title to the graph

Adding a legend to the graph

Adding a threshold line to the graph

Adding threshold breaches to the graph

Further reading

Have a go hero – creating a yellow warning area

Adding devices to Cacti

Creating a device

Time for action – creating a new device in Cacti

What just happened?

Selecting host templates for the device

Time for action – adding a host template to the device

What just happened?

Adding graphs to the device

Time for action – adding graphs to the device

What just happened?

Adding interface graphs to a device

Time for action – adding interface graphs to a device

What just happened?

Adding devices to the Cacti tree

Creating a tree

Time for action – creating a Cacti tree

What just happened?

Sub-tree items

Time for action – adding a sub-tree

What just happened?

Adding a device to the tree

Time for action – adding a device to the Cacti tree

What just happened?

Before we continue

Pop quiz – a few questions about Chapter 2

Summary

3. Creating and Using Templates

An introduction to templates

Data templates

Data input methods

Graph templates

Host templates

Data queries

Defining a data template

Time for action – defining a data template

What just happened?

Have a go hero – template for currently established TCP connections

Defining a graph template

CDEF definition

Time for action – defining a CDEF in Cacti

What just happened?

Defining the graph template

Time for action – defining the graph template

What just happened?

Adding the threshold line

Time for action – defining a graph template

What just happened?

Adding the green, yellow, and red areas

Time for action – adding the color areas

What just happened?

Adding a legend to the graph

Time for action – adding a legend

What just happened?

Back to basics—rrdtool graph command

Defining a host template

Time for action – defining a host template

What just happened?

Assigning a host template to a device

Importing/exporting templates

Importing templates

Time for action – importing a template

What just happened?

Exporting templates

Time for action – exporting a template

What just happened?

The template repository

Before we continue

Pop quiz – a few questions about Chapter 3

Summary

4. User Management

An introduction to Cacti user management

Users

Groups

Permissions

Creating a user

Time for action – creating the first Cacti user

What just happened?

General user settings

Graph Options

Authentication Realm

Realm and graph permissions

Realm permissions

Management permissions

Collection methods permissions

Template permissions

Import/export permissions

Configuration permissions

Utilities permissions

Time for action – setting realm permissions

What just happened?

Graph permissions

Time for action – setting graph permissions

What just happened?

Graph settings

The template user

Time for action – installing the missing packages

What just happened?

Copying permissions – the Batch Copy mode

Time for action – the Batch Copy

What just happened?

Integrate LDAP/Active Directory authentication

External user management

Time for action – setting up Active Directory authentication

What just happened?

Managing users with the Cacti CLI

Importing a list of users

Time for action – importing users from the CLI

What just happened?

Input validation

Check the existence of the template user

Reading the import file

Before we continue

Pop quiz – a few questions about Chapter 4

Summary

5. Data Management

An introduction to Cacti data management

Data input methods

Data queries

Creating data input methods

Preparation—creating the script

Gathering the data

Preparing the data for output

Installation of the script

Time for action – creating a data input method – Step 1

What just happened?

Time for action – creating a data input method – Step 2

What just happened?

The data template

Creating data queries

Building the XML data file

XML header

XML input

XML output

Installing the XML file

Creating the data query within Cacti

Time for action – creating a data query – Step 1

What just happened?

Time for action – creating a data query – Step 2

What just happened?

Create a remote SSH data input method

Preparation

The remote script

The local script

Input variables

The SSH command execution

Preparing the data

SSH public key authentication

Time for action – create SSH keys with PuTTY Key Generator

What just happened?

Creating the data input method

Time for action – creating the data input method

What just happened?

Creating the data template

Creating the graph template

Adding the graph to the device

Alternative methods

Have a go hero – remote command execution using SNMP

Before we continue

Pop quiz – a few questions about Chapter 5

Summary

6. Cacti Maintenance

An introduction to Cacti maintenance

Database

RRD files

The Cacti directory structure

docs

include

install

log

resource

rra

scripts

Backup and restore procedures

The MySQL database

Time for action – backup your Cacti database

What just happened?

Enhancing the database backup

Automatic file naming

Removing old backup files

The database backup

Compressing the backup

The whole script

The Cacti files

Building the backup file list

Time for action – backup your Cacti files

What just happened?

Enhancing the database backup script

Time for action – enhancing the backup script

What just happened?

Creating the cronjob—automating the backup

Time for action – creating a cronjob

What just happened?

Restoring from a backup

Restoring the Cacti database

Time for action – restoring the Cacti database

What just happened?

Restoring the Cacti files

Restoring all Cacti files

Time for action – restoring all Cacti files

What just happened?

Restoring a single file from the backup

Time for action – restoring the Cacti config.php file

What just happened?

Log file management

Time for action – configuring Logrotate

What just happened?

Cacti maintenance

List RRD files with no associated host

Time for action – finding orphaned RRD files

What just happened?

Automating the orphaned RRD file check

A short overview of the Cacti CLI functionality

Repairing templates

Repairing the database

Pop Quiz – a few questions about Chapter 6

Summary

7. Network and Server Monitoring

An introduction to network and server monitoring

Network devices

VMware ESX

Linux server

Windows WMI monitoring

Monitoring a network device

Configuring SNMP access on a Cisco switch

Time for action – set up SNMP on Cisco devices

What just happened?

Adding Cisco switch to Cacti

Time for action – adding a Cisco switch to Cacti

What just happened?

Configuring SNMP access on a Cisco PIX firewall

Time for action – set up SNMP access on Cisco PIX

What just happened?

Adding Cisco PIX Firewall to Cacti

Time for action – adding a Cisco PIX Firewall to Cacti

What just happened?

Monitoring VMware ESX servers

Set up SNMP access for VMware ESXi 4

Time for action – set up SNMP access on an ESXi 4 server

What just happened?

Set up SNMP access to VMware ESX 3.5

Time for action – set up SNMP access on an ESX 3.5 server

What just happened?

Adding VMware ESX servers to Cacti

Time for action – adding a VMware ESX host to Cacti

Windows monitoring

Windows SNMP setup

Time for action – enabling the SNMP server feature

What just happened?

Configuration of the Windows SNMP service

Time for action – configuring the Windows SNMP service

What just happened?

WMI setup

Time for action – setting up a Windows WMI user

What just happened?

Installing the CactiWMI add-on

Installing the wmi.php Cacti interface

Time for action – installing the CactiWMI add-on – Part 1

What just happened?

Installing the wmic command

Time for action – installing the CactiWMI add-on – Part 2

What just happened?

Performance measurement with CactiWMI

Time for action – performance measurement with CactiWMI

What just happened?

Pop quiz – a few questions about Chapter 7

Summary

8. Plugin Architecture

Introduction to the Plugin Architecture

Why plugins?

Plugin features

Common plugins

MAC Track plugin

Network WeatherMap

Thold

Installing the Plugin Architecture

Time for action – installing the Plugin Architecture

What just happened?

Upgrading the Plugin Architecture

Time for action – upgrading the Plugin Architecture

What just happened?

Configuring the Plugin Architecture

Time for action – configuring the Plugin Architecture

What just happened?

Downloading and installing plugins

PIA directory structure

Pre-PIA 2.x plugins

PIA 2.x plugins

The plugin repository

The settings plugin

Time for action – installing the settings plugin

What just happened?

Removing a plugin

Time for action – removing the settings plugin

What just happened?

Updating a plugin

Adding plugin permissions

Pop Quiz – a few questions about Chapter 8

Summary

9. Plugins

Plugin design

Plugin hooks

Plugin settings

The ntop_config_settings function

Display plugin data within Cacti

The ntop_show_tab function

Commonly used plugins

The settings plugin

Functionality

The superlinks plugin

Functionality

Installation

Configuration and usage

Time for action – adding an external page to Cacti

What just happened?

Creating a new plugin

File structure

Concept and design

PIA hooks

The tree_after hook

The draw_navigation_text hook

The config_arrays hook

The config_settings hook

The config_form hook

The api_device_save hook

The plugin setup

The plugin_cbEnhancedInfo_install function

Time for action – adding the realm permission functions

What just happened?

The cbEnhancedInfo_draw_navigation_text function

The cbEnhancedInfo_config_form function

The cbEnhancedInfo_api_device_save function

The cbEnhancedInfo_setup_table_new function

Time for action – adding additional fields to the host table

What just happened?

The cbEnhancedInfo_config_settings function

The cbEnhancedInfo_config_arrays function

Data presentation

Retrieve data from the database

Time for action – retrieve data from the database

What just happened?

Presenting data on the tree view page

Time for action – presenting data on the tree view page

What just happened?

Creating the table list web page

The action section

Time for action – deleting data

What just happened?

The data retrieval section

Time for action – sorting and retrieving data

What just happened?

The data presentation section

Time for action – presenting the data

What just happened?

Creating the add items form

The form_display function

The data retrieval section

The data presentation section

The form_save function

Time for action – retrieving data from the form post

What just happened?

Time for action – creating a new database item

What just happened?

Time for action – updating an existing item

What just happened?

Installing the plugin

Publishing

Pop Quiz – a few questions about Chapter 9

Summary

10. Threshold Monitoring with Thold

Threshold monitoring

Thold

Installing Thold

Downloading and installing Thold

Time for action – installing Thold

What just happened?

Configuring Thold

General options

Default Alerting Options

Default Emailing Options

Default Baseline Options

Using Thold

Assigning permissions and setting up an e-mail address

Time for action – give permission to a user

What just happened?

Creating a threshold

Time for action – creating your first threshold – Part 1

The threshold creation page

Basic and mandatory settings section

Threshold setup section

Alert setup section

What just happened?

Time for action – creating your first threshold – Part 2

What just happened?

Testing the threshold

Time for action – installing the stress tool

Viewing threshold breaches

Time for action – viewing breached thresholds

What just happened?

Creating threshold templates

Time for action – creating your first threshold template

What just happened?

Assigning threshold templates

Time for action – assigning a threshold template

What just happened?

Pop Quiz – A few questions about Chapter 10

Summary

11. Enterprise Reporting

Overview of Nectar and CereusReporting

Nectar

CereusReporting

Nectar

Time for action – installing Nectar

What just happened?

Report generation

Time for action – create your first Nectar report

What just happened?

Time for action – adding report items

What just happened?

CereusReporting

Installation

Time for action – installing CereusReporting

What just happened?

Plugin configuration

Time for action – configure CereusReporting

What just happened?

Report generation

On-demand report generation

Time for action – creating an on-demand report

What just happened?

Pre-defined report generation

Time for action – creating a pre-defined report

What just happened?

Scheduling a report

Time for action – scheduling a pre-defined report

What just happened?

Report Backup and Restore

Time for action – Backup and Restore a pre-defined report

What just happened?

Report scheduling and polling performance

Time for action – setup of a cron-based report generation

What just happened?

Advanced reporting features of CereusReporting

mPDF Report Engine

DSSTATS Reports

Availability reports

Smokeping reports

Mobile client support

Report templates

Pop Quiz – a few questions about Chapter 11

Summary

12. Cacti Automation for NOC

Overview of Cacti automation

The Cacti CLI

Users

Permissions

Trees

Devices

Graphs

Overview of Autom8

Trees

Graphs

Using the Cacti CLI

Adding permissions

Time for action – adding permissions to a user

What just happened?

Adding a Cacti tree

Time for action – adding a Cacti tree

What just happened?

Adding a device

Time for action – adding a single device to Cacti

What just happened?

Importing a list of devices into Cacti

Adding a graph to a device

Autom8 – true Cacti automation

Installation

Time for action – installing the Autom8 plugin

What just happened?

Patching the Cacti files

Time for action – patching the Cacti files

What just happened?

Autom8 rules

Tree rules

Time for action – adding a new Tree Rule

What just happened?

Time for action – applying an Autom8 rule to devices

What just happened?

Graph rules

Time for action – adding a Graph Rule

What just happened?

Further information

Pop Quiz – Let's test your knowledge about Chapter 12

Summary

A. Mobile Access / Administration

Overview of mobile solutions for Cacti

iCacti—the iPhone/iPad client

BBCacti—the BlackBerry client

nmidMobileClient—the Windows mobile client

The mobile plugin—mobile enhanced Cacti web page

The iPhone/iPad client

Requirements

Advantages

Disadvantages

Support

BBCacti—the BlackBerry client

Requirements

Advantages

Disadvantages

The nmidWebService plugin

Time for action – installing the WSO2 WebService framework

What just happened?

Installing the nmidWebService plugin

Time for action – installing the nmidWebService plugin

What just happened?

BBCacti installation

Time for action – installing the BBCacti client

What just happened?

BBCacti configuration

Time for action – configuration of BBCacti

What just happened?

Time for action – using the BBCacti client

What just happened?

The mobile plugin

Time for action – installing the mobile plugin

What just happened?

Summary

B. Online Resources

Cacti website

Spine

Plugin Architecture

Cacti documentation

Cacti forum

Cacti bug reporting

Cacti plugin hooks overview

Cacti Users' site

Howie's stuff

RRDTool

Tobi Oetiker

RRDTool, Cacti, and time zones

Xing German Cacti group

LinkedIn Cacti Group

NMID plugins and CereusReporting

C. Further Information

The Round Robin Database Tool

The RRD file architecture

SNMP: The Simple Network Management Protocol

The Management Information Base

SNMPv1

Security

SNMPv2 / SNMPv2c

Security

SNMPv3

SNMP support in Cacti

MRTG – Multi Router Traffic Grapher

Where to get support?

Cacti forums

Mailing list

Commercial support

D. Pop Quiz Answers

Index

Cacti 0.8Beginner's Guide

Cacti 0.8Beginner's Guide

Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: March 2011

Production Reference: 1110311

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

32 Lincoln Road

Olton

Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-849513-92-0

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Ed Maclean (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Thomas Urban

Reviewers

Michael Bouma

Mark Cutting

Acquisition Editor

Tarun Singh

Development Editor

Kartikey Pandey

Technical Editor

Kavita Iyer

Copy Editor

Neha Shetty

Indexers

Hemangini Bari

Tejal Daruwale

Editorial Team Leader

Akshara Aware

Project Team Leader

Ashwin Shetty

Project Coordinator

Poorvi Nair

Proofreader

Bernadette Watkins

Graphics

Nilesh Mohite

Production Coordinator

Aparna Bhagat

Cover Work

Aparna Bhagat

About the Author

Thomas Urban is the owner of Urban-Software.de, a software and consulting services company providing add-ons, plugins, and services for the Cacti and Zenoss Network Monitoring systems. He has been programming web applications for over 15 years, building reporting interfaces, network management software, asset management sites, and more.

I would like to thank the team at Packt Publishing—most of all for giving me this opportunity to write a book and also for taking care of schedules, providing support, guidance and feedback, and keeping me on track the whole way.

I would also like to thank all of the reviewers for taking the time to read, correct, and provide valuable feedback to the book throughout the 
writing process.

Lastly, I want to thank Despina—for making sure I never ran out of coffee on the countless evenings I spent sitting in front of the keyboard instead of with her and the children. I dedicate this book to her.

About the Reviewers

Michael Bouma in the IT business since 1990, starting as a programmer in assembly and Pascal.

He worked for more than 10 years in satellite communications, where he developed an interest for networks and network monitoring. Michael has worked with Cacti since 2001 and has introduced Cacti as the main monitoring product in three different companies. In his last two companies, he was also involved in writing several plugins for Cacti.

Michael is currently working as a network engineer at Atos Origin in the Netherlands. Here he is developing plugins for customers and setting up tooling and monitoring.

In his spare time he is active with Sloop Rowing races.

http://www.sterkesietze.nl

Mark Cutting has been working in the IT arena for the last 20 years. During this time, he has worked in a variety of areas including manufacturing, commodity-based trading, and finance.

In these positions, he has been involved in numerous network and application builds/rollouts, projects, design standards, and day-to-day operations. He currently manages a network consisting of 10 sites globally where he supports the core network infrastructure and the applications that are key to the business functions.

These technologies include SQL, Windows 2003/2008, Cisco, Juniper, Citrix, and numerous others. He also supports a wide range of global MPLS networks, and has designed and developed a network fail-over strategy that provides minimum down time for critical business applications and voice traffic.

In addition to the activities above, Mark is a member of the Cacti forums, under the name of mcutting. He is also a keen developer, working with technologies such as PHP, MySQL, Bash, AutoIT, and of course, Cacti.

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