Book Image

Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide

By : Thomas Urban
Book Image

Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide

By: Thomas Urban

Overview of this book

Cacti is a performance measurement tool that provides easy methods and functions for gathering and graphing system data. You can use Cacti to develop a robust event management system that can alert on just about anything you would like it to. But to do that, you need to gain a solid understanding of the basics of Cacti, its plugin architecture, and automation concepts. Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide will introduce you to the wide variety of features of Cacti and will guide you on how to use them for maximum effectiveness. Advanced topics like the plugin architecture and Cacti automation using the command-line interface will help you build a professional performance measurement system.Designed as a beginner's guide, the book starts off with the basics of installing and using Cacti, and also covers the advanced topics that will show you how to customize and extend the core Cacti functionalities. The book offers essential tutorials for creating advanced graphs and using plugins to create enterprise-class reports to show your customers and colleagues. From data templates to input methods and plugin installation to creating your own customized plugins, this book provides you with a rich selection of step-by-step instructions to reach your goals. It covers all you need to know to implement professional performance measurement techniques with Cacti and ways to fully customize Cacti to fit your needs. By the end of the book, you will be able to implement and extend Cacti to monitor, display, and report the performance of your network exactly the way you want.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Cacti 0.8Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Pop Quiz Answers
Index

About the Reviewers

Michael Bouma in the IT business since 1990, starting as a programmer in assembly and Pascal.

He worked for more than 10 years in satellite communications, where he developed an interest for networks and network monitoring. Michael has worked with Cacti since 2001 and has introduced Cacti as the main monitoring product in three different companies. In his last two companies, he was also involved in writing several plugins for Cacti.

Michael is currently working as a network engineer at Atos Origin in the Netherlands. Here he is developing plugins for customers and setting up tooling and monitoring.

In his spare time he is active with Sloop Rowing races.

http://www.sterkesietze.nl

Mark Cutting has been working in the IT arena for the last 20 years. During this time, he has worked in a variety of areas including manufacturing, commodity-based trading, and finance.

In these positions, he has been involved in numerous network and application builds/rollouts, projects, design standards, and day-to-day operations. He currently manages a network consisting of 10 sites globally where he supports the core network infrastructure and the applications that are key to the business functions.

These technologies include SQL, Windows 2003/2008, Cisco, Juniper, Citrix, and numerous others. He also supports a wide range of global MPLS networks, and has designed and developed a network fail-over strategy that provides minimum down time for critical business applications and voice traffic.

In addition to the activities above, Mark is a member of the Cacti forums, under the name of "mcutting". He is also a keen developer, working with technologies such as PHP, MySQL, Bash, AutoIT, and of course, Cacti.