We are running Cacti as follows :
Database/polling server
2 x 2.7GHz Xeon,
Suse Linux 8.2 under VM/ESX server,
4GB RAM ( usable : 3.6GB )
Disks 1x18GB, 1x36GB
IHS Webserver 2.0.42.1 ( IBM, based on Apache )
RRDTool 1.0.49
MySQL 4.0.24
PHP 4.3.8
Cacti 0.8.6g
Cactid 0.8.6f
This server is running MySQL, RRDTool, and polling. Administration & presentation access ( for "normal" user - approx. 200 registered ) is realized through separate servers, connected via a shared WAN link 120 Mbit/s
MySQL tuning :
key_buffer = 32M
max_allowed_packet = 1M
table_cache = 64
sort_buffer_size = 512K
net_buffer_length = 8K
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M
max_connections = 4000
query_cache_size=64M
Presentation server
1 x 1.7GHz Xeon,
Suse Linux 8.2 under VM/ESX server,
1GB RAM
IHS Webserver 2.0.42.1 ( IBM, based on Apache )
MySQL 4.0.24, connected to the Database/polling server
PHP 4.3.8
Cacti 0.8.6g
RRDTool is connected via NFS mount
Administration server
1 x 2.8GHz P4
Suse Linux 8.2
1GB RAM
IHS Webserver 2.0.42.1 ( IBM, based on Apache )
MySQL 4.0.24, connected to the Database/polling server
PHP 4.3.8
Cacti 0.8.6g
RRDTool is connected via NFS mount
Polling statistics ( 1 extract )
12/15/2005 02:22:38 PM - SYSTEM STATS: Time:157.5933 Method:cactid Processes:6 Threads:30 Hosts:1479 HostsPerProcess:247 DataSources:46797 RRDsProcessed:23972
The network devices are located all around the world, connected through WAN links with 2 - 155 Mbit/s. The devices are mainly layer 3 router, currently only traffic I/O and CPU usage is monitored. Long term it is intended to include all our layer 2 devices as well but that will most probably require the distributed polling support promised for Cacti 0.9x .
On the presentation server we have linked - into Cacti as a separate tab - the Network Weathermap ( Howie 's php-weathermap-0.6 ) for the global core links.
Please, don't ask for which company we are working - its a big global player, that's all we are allowed to say.
Problems so far
- the presentation of data / charts is a bit slow - we need better hardware for the presentation and a faster link to the database / polling server. We will also try to improve the performance by separating database & polling on different servers with a 1 Gbit/s connection ( at least ) together with improved hardware ( more CPU's & more RAM ).
- we are missing some sort functions in the tables for devices & user management
- users would like to customize the time zone to view the results ( data collection is based on GMT/UTC of course )