Replicate cacti data from a private network to a public one

[jmacias]

I have the following scenario:

- A customer with 400+ routers on a private frame relay network
- He wants us to monitor his routers for him
- Obviously there's no way for an external host to see anything inside the frame relay network
- Cacti's front end has to be available from our network (a firewall restricted homologated subnet)

I don't see any simple way to handle this, but I was thinking if I can have a cacti server in the private network (cacti-in) doing the regular polling, and then replicate the information to another cacti server on our network (cacti-out).

Provisioning works the other way around, it is done in our server (cacti-out) and replicated to the private server (cacti-in). Though, I see a big problem, when I create a new device I won't be able to see it, so the snmp queries won't see it, and won't find any interface or nothing else to graph.

Any hints on how can I get this scenario working?

Thanks

Jorge

[BSOD2600]

Probably the easiest setup would be to have a VPN connection into his private network / cacti server. Then you'd have full access, it would be secured, and you would be 'local' on his LAN.

[jmacias]

BSOD2600,

thanks for you suggestion, I though about something like that but the customer just won't provide any sort of outside access into his network.

[BSOD2600]

Umm, ok. So if he won't allow any outside access in, how are you suppose to manage it? Let alone replicate it out to another server. Doesn't sound like he has thought through the situation very much.

[jmacias]

He will let a host inside the private network send data to an external host, but not the other way around. I also think it makes no sense to try to outsource the monitoring service when you can't be seen from the outside.

[BSOD2600]

Alright, well then if he'll allow stuff to go outside, then you possibly have an option.

1) Set up MySQL replication between the private network and your server. Not sure if it will work one way, but I think it should
2) Set up the private server to FTP the .rrd files to your server.

That should be it for replication. Although, I'm not sure how you're suppose to make changes to the private server...