New to Cacti, Need help with research.

[busi386]

Hello All


I am new to cacti. I am doing some research on the product, and I have a few questions.
I hope some one is able to answer.

1. We currently use nagios. Nagios has some graphing features. However, over all our customers are not happy with it.
We believe that Nagios and Cacti uses RRDtools. That being the case is there a way to get cacti to use the nagios database to draw cacti graphs?

2. (a) What is the best way to learn Cacti?
2. (b) Does any one have any pdf documents they could share?
2. (c) Does anyone have any links to some informative youtube videos, or any other videos?
2. (c) How good is this forum for getting help on cacti? Are there any other forums some one would like to recommend? Are there many cacti experts around?


Thanks in advance.

[mcutting]

Hi - see below

1. We currently use nagios. Nagios has some graphing features. However, over all our customers are not happy with it.
We believe that Nagios and Cacti uses RRDtools. That being the case is there a way to get cacti to use the nagios database to draw cacti graphs?

Yes - see here http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=49735

2. (a) What is the best way to learn Cacti?
2. (b) Does any one have any pdf documents they could share?

The best place to visit is http://docs.cacti.net

2. (c) Does anyone have any links to some informative youtube videos, or any other videos?

Google is your friend - https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... i%20graphs

2. (c) How good is this forum for getting help on cacti? Are there any other forums some one would like to recommend? Are there many cacti experts around?

This forum is probably the best place to get help. There are several "Guru Users" around, plus all the devs are regularly here.

[busi386]

Thank you Guru cacti users

I am mostly interested in retrofitting cacti graphs ontop of Nagios if that make sense.
It looks like its going to be an exciting adventure. I start looking at the graphs links you provided.

I found some really good you tube videos from the "knowledge Power on Knowledgepia.com".
They have some cacti videos. I am currently trying to install it on Linux now. However I got stuck on
mysql, so I'm doing some flash mysql training. I don't remember if Nagios uses mysql, If not I wonder if I will have to maintain two separate databases? one for nagios and one for cacti? or will they both share the same mysql databases?

[mcutting]

Nagios uses MySQL but cacti has it's own database owing to different tables and fields.
There is a CactiEZCD put together by Cigamit which is ready to run if this helps.