Need Information about Cacti

[vineeshkumarpv]

Hi there,
I am very new to the cacti and this forum. I am having approx 400+ routers, and looking for a opensource solution for Performance mgmt, of my routers. I need to have some information about the product
1.What is the maximum number of devices loaded and working in any environment
1.a, If its working, what is the h/w configuration
2. Is ther any tools/scripts using which, I can get the daily/weekly/monthly data into a database server, like postgreSQL
3. Can we directly integrate cacti with PostgreSQl or mySQL
4.I am looking for on the fly graph generation, ie, the data will be on a database and when the request comes, the database will b queried and the graphs will be generated. What are the suggestions for such solution from the experienced forum members.
Thank you very much
//Vineesh

[Howie]

Hi there,
I am very new to the cacti and this forum. I am having approx 400+ routers, and looking for a opensource solution for Performance mgmt, of my routers. I need to have some information about the product
1.What is the maximum number of devices loaded and working in any environment

I have 5000 graphs on 220 hosts running on a Dell 1950 with 8GB and 15K SAS drives. It could do double that without much trouble. Check out the threads on this forum about Boost and Spine for performance data from BIG installations, but there are people with around 100000 datasources, at least.

1.a, If its working, what is the h/w configuration

For mine, Dell PE 1950, single quad-core processor, 8GB RAM, 15K 72GB drives. (i/o performance is important).

2. Is ther any tools/scripts using which, I can get the daily/weekly/monthly data into a database server, like postgreSQL

If you only want to do this to generate graphs, then you don't need to. Otherwise, see the Transporter plugin.

3. Can we directly integrate cacti with PostgreSQl or mySQL

It requires mysql.

4.I am looking for on the fly graph generation, ie, the data will be on a database and when the request comes, the database will b queried and the graphs will be generated. What are the suggestions for such solution from the experienced forum members.

This is what Cacti does. The database is the rrdtool files. The actual performance data is not stored in the mysql database. RRDtool is a specialised tool for logging data in a fixed storage space, by aggregating older data.

[vineeshkumarpv]

Hi Howie,
Thank u for so much information at once.
I am looking for a database integration for the following reasons
1.The size of the data collected,In my case it will be huge I think.
Can u just tell me how much data u r collecting and processing?
2.I need to generate historical graphs say one month link utilization of a router in weekly monthly and qurterly basis
3. Data recovery, in cse of h/w failure.

Also i am looking for the following features
1.Availability reports
2.Utilization reports
3.SLA reports, which uses the data of availabilty report and some external preset data.
4.Grouping of routers ie, whether i can create a group like location1,location2 etc and add routers to these groups and create some acces controls like username and passwords for specific groups, and only the intended used should see the intended data/reports.
Thank u very much once again
Regards
Vineesh

[Howie]

Hi Howie,
Thank u for so much information at once.
I am looking for a database integration for the following reasons
1.The size of the data collected,In my case it will be huge I think.
Can u just tell me how much data u r collecting and processing?
2.I need to generate historical graphs say one month link utilization of a router in weekly monthly and qurterly basis
3. Data recovery, in cse of h/w failure.

Around 5500 data sources - probably about 12000 variables. My devices are split evenly between switches, routers and servers. We collect traffic stats for every port, and error stats for every port, plus CPU, memory, disk etc for everything.

I think you need to read about rrdtool and how it works. http://www.rrdtool.org/

For config backup/recovery, you should look at tools like Rancid or Pancho.

Also i am looking for the following features
1.Availability reports
2.Utilization reports
3.SLA reports, which uses the data of availabilty report and some external preset data.
4.Grouping of routers ie, whether i can create a group like location1,location2 etc and add routers to these groups and create some acces controls like username and passwords for specific groups, and only the intended used should see the intended data/reports.
Thank u very much once again
Regards
Vineesh

Cacti itself doesn't produce any reports. It also doesn't do grouping in the way you describe. You can present graphs in groups using Graph Trees and you can control access to Graph Trees by users, which is roughly the same thing.

There are a couple of plugins (ReportIt and Reports) that produce summary reports, but there's no concept of SLAs. ReportIt would probably produce your utilization report. I think someone on the forums has an availability report plugin.