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Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring

Chapter 1. Cacti Overview

Computerization has boosted human intellectual capacity to such a level that a new era of communication has begun. There is hardly any human activity that has not been affected by a computer in one way or another; be it production, agriculture, health, education, military, travel, crime detection, and so on. Naturally, computerization is so deep that we humans can't think of living a single day without it.

In the field of Information Technology, computer communication means networking between computers that can be classified as LAN (Local Area Network), WAN (Wide Area Network), ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), and so on. A network is a series of points or nodes interconnected by communication paths. Networks can interconnect with other networks and contain sub-networks. This interconnectivity is done by devices such as routers, switches, hubs, network interface cards (NIC), and so on. In the present infrastructure, devices are very complex, and hard to maintain and monitor, so it is not possible to monitor devices and servers manually at production level.

One of the fundamental jobs of a network administrator is network monitoring. Network monitoring is the process of checking computers, systems, and services that comprise a network. This examination allows a network administrator to maintain a robust network and even improve the network.

You'll never know when a power supply is going to burn out, when a server is going to crash, when network bandwidth drops, when a router just stops working, when your LAN is hacked, and so on. You will never know when these things will happen, but you can be prepared for situations like these. Effective network monitoring will help to cope with such situations and minimize down-time. It will also help to collect periodic information about the network, which will help you to generate log files and performance charts of system capabilities and responses. With such data, you will be able to optimize your network infrastructure and performance.

To do this job effectively, ISO (International Organization for Standardization) designed a model called FCAPS to aid in the understanding of the major functions of a network management system:

Fault management
Configuration management
Accounting management
Performance management
Security management

By implementing network monitoring software, system administrators can gather sufficient amounts of data and reports periodically, which will help them to perform management processes fairly and more easily. There are several commercial and open source network monitoring software that are robust and one-stop guiding tools. Cacti is one such tool, robust and one of the best!

What is Cacti?

Cacti is an open source, network monitoring and graphing tool written in PHP/MySQL. It uses the RRDTool (Round-robin database tool) engine to store data and generate graphics, and collects periodical data through Net-SNMP (an application suite to implement SNMP—Simple Network Management Protocol).

Ian Berry had started developing Cacti back in June 2001, while he was working with a local Internet service provider in the U.S. He found that RRDTool is flexible enough to generate complex graphing and reports about network infrastructures, but it was lacking a friendly interface. So, he started developing the interface with PHP/MySQL and had the first public release (version 0.6) on November 21, 2001. Soon, the application gained its popularity in the open source community.

In 2004, Ian brought a second developer into the team, which has expanded to six developers today. Here they are (in the order of joining the project):

Ian Berry
Larry Adams
Tony Roman
J.P. Pasnak
Jimmy Conner
Reinhard Scheck

Basic knowledge on RRDtool

RRDTool is a high performance data logging and graphing system, designed to handle time series data like network bandwidth, room temperature, CPU load, server load, and to monitor devices such as routers, UPS, etc. It is also known as the round-robin database tool, an industry standard, open source solution. It lets the administrator log and analyze data collected from all kinds of data sources (DS), which are capable of answering SNMP queries. The data analysis part of the RRDTool is based on the ability to generate graphical representations of the data values collected over a definable time period.

RRDTool is developed by Tobi Oeticker, also known for his famous creation MRTG. RRDTool is written in C language and stores its data in .rdd files. The number of records in a single .rrd file never increases, meaning that old records are frequently removed, and it presents useful graphs by processing the data to enforce a certain data density. RRDTool offers several command line switches to access and manipulate .rdd files:

create
update
updatev
graph
dump
restore
fetch
tune
last
info
rrdresize
xport
rrdcgi

Note

Details of the command line switches of the RRDTool can be obtained from http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc/rrdtool.en.html.

There are also a number of language bindings for RRDTool, which allow administrators or programmers to use it directly from Perl, Python, tcl, PHP, and Ruby. So, it can be used to write custom monitoring shell scripts or create whole applications using its language bindings. Cacti is an application written in PHP, using its PHP language binding.

How does the RRDTool work?

RRDTool follows a logical design to acquire and process data collected from data sources (DS). The following is a brief discussion of the different steps in the logical process:

Data acquisition: When monitoring a device or system, it is necessary to receive data on a constant time interval. Manually, it is not possible to maintain such activity as a system administrator. In such situations, the RRDTool comes in handy. It stores the data in a round-robin database, which is received on a constant time interval set by the system administrator, using the poller application set as scheduler in the operating system.
Data consolidation: The system administrator may log the data in a five-minute interval, but he/she might be interested in knowing the accumulated update over the last month. In this case, simply storing the data in a five-minute interval for the whole month will solve the problem. But this will require huge disk space and a considerable amount of time to analyse the data, as in a network environment, administrators are not monitoring only a single device. RRDTool solves this problem with the data consolidation feature. When creating a round-robin database, the administrator can define at which interval data consolidation should occur using consolidation functions (CF) such as MAXIMIUM, AVERAGE, MINIMUM, and others.
Round Robin Archives of consolidated data: Data values of consolidation setup are stored in Round Robin Archives (RRA). In this way, the RRDTool stores data in the most efficient way for a certain time period defined by the system administrator. This process keeps the database file at a constant size for faster processing and analyzing.
Unknown data: RRDTool stores data at a constant interval in a round-robin database. Sometimes, this data might not be available to store in RRD due to device failure or other causes. In this case, the RRDTool stores the RRD file with *UNKNOWN* data value. This *UNKNOWN* value is supported by all RRDTool functions.
Graphing: RRDtool allows system administrator to generate reports in graphical and numerical forms based on data stored in the round-robin database (RDD) by using its built-in graph processing functions. Customization of these graphics is possible based on color, size, and contents.

Key benefits

Install and setup Cacti to monitor your network and assign permissions to this setup in no time at all

Create, edit, test, and host a graph template to customize your output graph

Create new data input methods, SNMP, and Script XML data query

Full of screenshots and step-by-step instructions to monitor your network with Cacti

Description

Cacti is a network monitoring tool that provides graphic solutions to your everyday monitoring issues. It has a wide variety of features and misusing them can mean that you are not monitoring your network as closely as you think. This book takes you through all of the key features of Cacti and shows how to use them for maximum effectiveness. This book will teach you how to use Cacti effectively to monitor your network through its web interface leaving aside all the heavy chunks of code. You will be introduced to all the features of Cacti in an easy-to-understand format. This book introduces Cacti and goes through its complete installation and setup. After a quick look, it will teach you to use Cacti's amazing graph templating and user management features. You will learn to customize graphs and make them better looking and easier to understand. It will teach you to provide the paths to any external script or command using Cacti. Then it will take you through importing and managing new templates and also customizing them. Creating users and assigning permissions to them is the next step in this book. Towards the end, you will learn to take backups and restore the system.

What you will learn

Implement SNMP with Cacti using the Net-SNMP application suite

Retrieve raw data from the system using Net-SNMP

Create graphs using the RRDtool for easy understanding

Add devices to Cacti and use graph templates to monitor your network

Use built-in data queries to check the status of your network

Import and export your templates and exchange them with the community

Create users and assign permissions to them to view or edit graphs

Understand how Net-SNMP application suite implements SNMP with Cacti and use Net-SNMP to retrieve raw data from the system, then use the RRDtool to create graphs

Understand Cacti s folder structure along with methods of backing up and restoring

Use advanced command-line scripts for easy access and managing network

What do you get with Print?

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Paperback book shipped to your preferred address

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Jeeves_Moss Mar 24, 2018

Nothing really special. Google it. it's cheaper

Amazon Verified review

Wojciech Kocjan Oct 25, 2009

According to publisher's page this book is targetted for people not very experienced with Linux and/or Cacti. And I confirm this. This book walks through setup and provides very detailed information about everything that needs to be done. Authors also introduce SNMP and how data is organized in an easy to understand way without introducing irrelevant details that non-advanced users will not need to know.This book starts with taking the reader through every step that is needed to set up Cacti. While there are Linux distributions that provide Cacti, the book also shows how to set it up manually, which is a good solution for users that want to have more control over Cacti. Every step is shown in an easy to follow way which makes setting it up trivial. The only downside is that the book focuses on Debian/Ubuntu and APT packaging system - it would be of great benefit to also show similar path for RPM packages.The book then goes on to configuring Cacti along with explaining underlying technologies like RRD, which is the Round Robin Database that is used for data and graphs. It also explains the concept of templates, reusability and why it is important to use them. The book also introduces SNMP, which is used for retrieving information from network aware devices and XML used by Cacti.While the book introduces every concept related to Cacti the thing I found missing is extending some of them, such as more details on RRDTool - better understanding of RRDTool would allow making graphs better. SNMP chapter was also introducing the basics, but a continuation for readers interested in more details would also be beneficial. The book is only 116 pages and additional 2-3 chapters would be enough to introduce features for more advanced users.I would recommend this book for new users of Cacti users. It should help them set up graphs much faster. This book will not provide much value for experienced Cacti users as it focuses only on the basics.

Matlock Dec 20, 2022

Except for template creation. This book is primarily for new systems admins. If you're an experienced systems admin the Internet can get you through an install and setup. But thanks to the Seller/Writer as I did jot see many books on Cacti monitoring station when I was exploring.

Lee Hanxue Oct 20, 2010

I read this book with the expectation that it will provide me with in-depth overview of how to unleash the full capabilities for Cacti for network monitoring, as well as effective network management practices using Cacti.The first few chapters merely provide a brief overview of what Cacti is, and poorly written installation guide. The middle part of the book brings you through step-by-step on how to set up graphs, templates and so on. Nothing insightful, and no value over trying Cacti out by yourself. Finally the last few chapters only give a very brief overview of SNMP and network management concepts - again nothing insightful and very relevant to Cacti.Stay away from this book - you can get more useful guides by searching online. You may also want to consider other alternatives to Cacti such as Nagios, ZenOSS or OpenNMS.

ER Sep 10, 2009

My initial inclination is to say that this book is worthless. Given that I spent $35 on it, it's worse that worthless. At around 100 pages in length, the first 40 are dedicated toward understanding what a network is, a general overview of RRD and Cacti and a very poorly written install guide. With only about 60 pages remaining, a full 10 are wasted explaining what SNMP is and giving a very weak overview of how it works. Fifty pages to go. Don't expect much. Having used Cacti for 3 days when this book arrived, I found that ingesting it cover to cover yielded nothing new. Nothing. Zero. Honestly, the readme files are better. The online user manual is a thousand times better than this book. I cannot warn you enough to avoid this piece of trash.

Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring: Monitor your network with ease!

What do you get with Print?

Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring

Chapter 1. Cacti Overview

What is Cacti?

What is Cacti?

Why Cacti?

Cacti operation

Data retrieval

Note

Data storage

Data presentation

Basic knowledge on Net-SNMP

Basic knowledge on RRDtool

Note

How does the RRDTool work?

Summary

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