Cacti Installation for FC Switches (Brocade)

[dattaseva]

Hi Friends,

I am very much new to installing Cacti and configuring it.

We have 100+ Brocade SAN switches in our environment. In my previous organisation, we used cacti for Ports traffic and switch health and it was really useful and amazing. But, I dint know how it was installed, configured and maintained. Now I moved to a new orginanisation where I felt the need of cacti was immediate and necessary.

We are using all Windows based Jump Servers. I would like to install Cacti in Windows Servers and start fetching data from all switches.

I would need the steps for installation and also how to configure cacti for the Brocade switches and monitoring please??

Thanks in Advance!

[netniV]

First, you would probably want the Windows Installer version of Cacti which I think someone produces unless you are willing to do this all manually. I can't recall where you find that as I've never installed Cacti on a Windows box. I have found it things like Cacti work better on Linux were there are less overheads.

That said, once you have cacti installed you will need to enable SNMP on each of the switches, configuring the version (I use 2c) and community. Once you have that done, you may also need to allow your Cacti server's IP on the switches for SNMP access (I haven't looked at their manual to know if that is a requirement). With all that done, you then need to add your devices into Cacti. Your best bet for that is to create a template'd device type, create a device from that template and have it automatically create the graphs for each interface, etc. With all that done and tested on a device, you could then either manually add a device at a time, testing the setup, or you can use the cli/add_device.php to add the devices via command line.

What you really should do, is pick up a copy of the Cacti 1.x book that has lots of useful information on how Cacti works and how to install from scratch.
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[dattaseva]

Thanks buddy for the response. Do you have steps how to install cacti in Linux? Also you said to configure SNMP in SAN switches. I see its already configured for our switches (SNMPv3) what additional step do I need to configure in SNMP for cacti on switch end?

Thanks in Advance!

[netniV]

Depending on your flavour of linux your best bet is to use system packages that already have it built in. For my own preference, I like ubuntu and to get the latest cacti on there you would use the debian backports repository. See Paul Gevers signature for more information on that as he builds them

You can define your default SNMP options within settings in Cacti. That way when you add a new device, it automatically picks up those settings. If you need to mass change this afterwards, you can do so using the device listing and tick those you want to change. There will be an option bottom right that says "Change Device Settings" and when you click go, presents you with a screen for mass changes. Tick those you want to change and then apply them.