Cacti

Cacti is a monitoring system that stores its data in an RRDtool database.

I use it on Bellman to track server performance and to track latency on my Comcast Business connection. Now I am setting it up to monitor Vastra network devices.

I am using a server with Debian. I installed it from packages, but downloaded and compiled Spine from source. Installation was easy. Now I have to configure it to actually collect and display some data.

We are changing out an AT&T fibre link for a Comcast 150Mbps link, so I need to capture data now to get a before and after picture. That's my first priority.

Let's see, there is the link itself, and the connection downstream across the Mount St. Helena (MSH) link.

For starters, let's grab data from Mickey the router.

• ether1 = Fibre
• ether6 = Burnside
• ether7 = MSH

SNMPwalk

If you can't access your router with snmpwalk, you won't be able to use cacti. I start by trying snmpwalk.

snmpwalk -v 2c -c public mickey.cds1.net

Then I install the MIB, for example this one: http://www.mikrotik.com/download/Mikrotik.mib