Updated: October 14 2007
Updates available at virtualappliances.net
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.
Cacti information (including full documentation, screenshots, support forum, and additional scripts) can be found at: cacti.net
Build 110
Build 97
During the first run, a simple wizard is displayed for configuring Cacti. It should be noted that none of these settings need to be changed from the defaults.
It is safe to click Next, Next, Next, and Done.
During the first login to Cacti server (not to be confused with the Virtual Appliances web administration interface), you will be prompted to change your password.
NOTE: the default user name/password for Cacti is admin/admin.
A pseudo-filesystem exporting the Cacti scripts and resource directory is shared as "cacti" using the standard SMB/CIFS protocol. This will allow installing Cacti extensions and plugins without having to manually copy files into the VA.
The default SMB/CIFS user name/password is "admin/admin".
The cacti share can be accessed by any capable Windows or SMB client using the following UNC path:
\\<IP address or host name of VA>\cacti
This share can be disabled using the VA webadmin console (under "Configure Samba").
For security purposes, it is strongly recommended to disable the Samba server once completed importing files into the web server.
The Username/password is 'root/root'. Please change this password if using the Cacti VA in a production environment.
As there is currently no Virtual Appliances Management Console interface for the SSH server, it is up to the user to manually disable the SSH daemon if necessary.
All Virtual Appliances are mDNS aware. In order to make Windows & Linux clients mDNS aware, it is necessary to configure and/or enable the functionality.
Multicast DNS allows the Cacti VA to be referenced by the host name "cacti.local."
Install the freely downloadable Bonjour for Windows package.
nss-mdns needs to be installed and configured.
It is *STRONGLY* recommended that MySQL user privileges be reviewed prior to making a MySQL server publicly accessible. In particular, it is essential that a password be applied to the 'root' user.
The default MySQL superuser name is 'root' without a password.
For more information, see General Security Issues in the MySQL 5.0 manual.
phpMyAdmin is a comprehensive management/administration tool for MySQL. It provides all the functionality required to manage users, and databases through an SSL web interface and comes pre-installed.
phpMyAdmin is accessible at HTTPS on the VA host
The Cacti VA is configured with two virtual hard disks. The first disk contains the base operating system and a master 'image' of Cacti. The second disk is the data disk. It can be safely replaced with a larger virtual disk. The Cacti VA will automatically migrate necessary files to the new virtual hard disk.
The default installation includes a 2GB data virtual hard disk, which will contain Cacti data and the MySQL database used by Cacti.
NOTE: The Cacti VA cannot run without a second data virtual hard disk.
This procedure involves manually adding the old Cacti VMDK to the current Cacti VA, copying data, and removing the old Cacti VMDK.
The Cacti data is stored in the following subdirectories within the Cacti VA:
It is also necessary to migrate the MySQL database (found in /data/mysql) in order to retain Cacti information. This can be done by copying the entire datastore from /var/lib/mysql or by exporting data using phpMyAdmin and re-importing into the new Cacti MySQL instance.
Once the data has been successfully migrated to the new location, it is necessary to adjust some Cacti settings.
Use phpMyAdmin or other remote MySQL administration tool to create/manage database backups.
Please note, there is no direct access to the MySQL command-line utilities from within the VA.
The Cacti Virtual Appliance now supports end-user configured static network routes. These can be configured from within the Networking section of the Virtual Appliances Management Console.
Not currently implemented
The default memory allocation for the Cacti VA is 256MB. Please adjust accordingly depending on system load, database size(s), and the number of hosts being monitored.