Cacti Checklist Questions

[anicholas]

1. Does Cacti allow for remote command execution?
2. How does this work as we go acroos plaforms(windows/linux)?
3. Does it allow for both real time & historical metrics?
4. How "real time" is real (i.e instant vs. 5min average)?
5. What runs on the client?
For this question im not sure if I am right but I am guesting SNMP......

6. How "chatty" is Cacti?
7. Data collection key information World Wide Name?

[TheWitness]

1. Does Cacti allow for remote command execution?
2. How does this work as we go acroos plaforms(windows/linux)?
3. Does it allow for both real time & historical metrics?
4. How "real time" is real (i.e instant vs. 5min average)?
5. What runs on the client?
For this question im not sure if I am right but I am guesting SNMP......

6. How "chatty" is Cacti?
7. Data collection key information World Wide Name?

1. It can execute scripts, which can include rsh/ssh/dcom/socket, you name it.
2. It all depends on who is doing the polling and what remote execution tools you have. As mentioned rsh/ssh are pretty much the norm for Linux/UNIX, and DCOM (wbem/cim) are the norms for Microsoft. However, depending on tools, you can also run ssh from Windows to Linux/UNIX. For example Cygwin provides ssh, although running ssh is expensive timing wise.
3. With plugins yes. For example, there is a plugin called Realtime that allows graphs at a 5 second interval. However, please note that some metrics are not updated by snmp any more frequently than 15 seconds. In addtion, some rsh/ssh scripts can take a while to run. Otherwise, you can configure cacti to poll all the way down to 10 seconds, but with limited scalability.
4. See 3.
5. IE7, Firefox, Opera, Safari
6. The poller asks questions frequently. But this amounts to a nit (almost nothing) in the grand scheme of things.
7. This does not make sense.

TheWitness