Cacti Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

Thomas Urban, Glyn Astill

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781788293488
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Networking
• Index: Computer Science

A comprehensive guide to learning Cacti and using it to implement performance measurement and reporting within a Network Operations CenterAbout This Book• A complete Cacti book that focuses on the basics as well as the advanced concepts you need to know for implementing a Network Operations Center• A step-by-step Beginner's Guide with detailed instructions on how to create and implement custom plugins• Written by Thomas Urban – creator of the "Cereus" and "NMID" plugins for Cacti known as Phalek in the Cacti forumWho This Book Is ForIf you are a network operator and want to use Cacti for implementing performance measurement for trending, troubleshooting, and reporting purposes, then this book is for you. You only need to know the basics of network management and SNMP.What You Will Learn• Setting up Cacti on Linux and Windows systems• Extending the core functionality by using the plugin architecture• Building your own custom plugins• Creating your own custom data input method to retrieve data from your systems• Using SNMP, SSH, and WMI to retrieve remote performance data• Designing and create enterprise-class reports with the reporting plugins• Implementing threshold-based alerting using the Thold plugin• Automating common administrative tasks utilizing the command-line interface and the automate functionality• Migrating Cacti to new servers• Building a multi remote-poller environmentIn DetailCacti is a performance measurement tool that provides easy methods and functions for gathering and graphing system data. You can use Cacti to develop a robust event management system that can alert on just about anything you would like it to. But to do that, you need to gain a solid understanding of the basics of Cacti, its plugin architecture, and automation concepts.Cacti Beginner's Guide will introduce you to the wide variety of features of Cacti and will guide you on how to use them for maximum effectiveness. Advanced topics such as the plugin architecture and Cacti automation using the command-line interface will help you build a professional performance measurement system. Designed as a beginner's guide, the book starts off with the basics of installing and using Cacti, and also covers the advanced topics that will show you how to customize and extend the core Cacti functionalities. The book offers essential tutorials for creating advanced graphs and using plugins to create enterprise-class reports to show your customers and colleagues. From data templates to input methods and plugin installation to creating your own customized plugins, this book provides you with a rich selection of step-by-step instructions to reach your goals. It covers all you need to know to implement professional performance measurement techniques with Cacti and ways to fully customize Cacti to fit your needs. You will also learn how to migrate Cacti to new servers. Lastly you will also be introduced to the latest feature of building a scalable remote poller environment. By the end of the book, you will be able to implement and extend Cacti to monitor, display, and report the performance of your network exactly the way you want.Style and approachWritten for beginners to Cacti, this book contains step-by-step instructions and hands-on tutorials for network operators to learn how to implement and use the core Cacti functions.

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Table of Contents

1. Preface
   1. What this book covers
   2. What you need for this book
   3. Who this book is for
   4. Conventions
   5. Reader feedback
   6. Customer support
      1. Downloading the example code
      2. Downloading the color images of this book
      3. Errata
      4. Piracy
      5. Questions
1. Installing Cacti
   1. Preparing the system - basic prerequisites
      1. Web server
      2. PHP
      3. MySQL database
      4. NET-SNMP package
   2. Installing Cacti on a CentOS 7 system
      1. Preparing the system
         1. Time for action - installing the missing packages and preparing the system
         2. What just happened?
      2. Downloading and extracting Cacti
         1. Time for action - downloading Cacti
         2. What just happened?
      3. Creating the database
         1. Time for action - creating the database
         2. What just happened?
      4. Configuring Cacti
         1. Time for action - configuring Cacti
         2. What just happened?
      5. Creating the poller cron entry and Cacti's system user
         1. Time for action - creating the poller's cron entry and Cacti's system account
         2. What just happened?
      6. Installing the Spine poller
         1. Time for action - installing Spine
         2. What just happened?
      7. Differences between source and APT/yum installations
         1. Have a go hero - remote server for database hosting
   3. Installing Cacti on a Windows system
      1. The community-built Windows installer
         1. Time for action - starting the Windows setup
         2. What just happened? ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Credits
• About the Author
• About the Reviewer
• www.PacktPub.com
• Customer Feedback
• Preface
• Installing Cacti
• Using Graphs to Monitor Networks and Devices
• Creating and Using Templates
• User Management
• Data Management
• Cacti Maintenance
• Network and Server Monitoring
• Plugin Architecture
• Plugins
• Threshold Monitoring with Thold
• Enterprise Reporting
• Cacti Automation for NOC
• Migrating Cacti to a New Server
• Multiple Poller with Cacti
• Online Resources
• Further Information
• Pop Quiz Answers