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README for Virtual Appliances ntop 1.1RC1 (build 207)

Updated: June 07 2008

Updates available at virtualappliances.net


What is ntop?

ntop is a network traffic probe that shows the network usage, similar to what the popular top Unix command does. ntop is based on libpcap and it has been written in a portable way in order to virtually run on every Unix platform and on Win32 as well.

Source: ntop.org

Changelog

Build 207
- Initial release

Shell Access

The Username/password is 'root/root'. Please change this password if using the ntop 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.

Enabling Client-side Multicast DNS (mDNS)

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 ntop VA to be referenced by the host name "ntop.local."

Windows

Install the freely downloadable Bonjour for Windows package.

Linux

nss-mdns needs to be installed and configured.

Disk Storage

The default filesystem size for the ntop Virtual Appliance is 2GB, of which most is available for use by the appliance itself.

It is possible to add an additional virtual hard disk to the ntop VA to expand the database capacity. See "Additional Virtual Hard Disk" section below.

Additional Virtual Hard Disk

It is very easy to add additional storage to the ntop VA!

Simply create a second (virtual) hard disk and attach it to the ntop VA. The new VHD will be automatically detected, initialized, and existing data migrated from the first hard disk. This all occurs all without user interaction at boot-time.

Best Practice:

If the hosted web application(s) and/or MySQL databases are known to eventually grow larger than the free space in the boot hard disk, add a VHD to the ntop VA prior to first boot.

This alleviates the need for adding a VHD later and the downtime required to migrate existing data.

Please consult the documentation for your virtualization platform for additional information on adding a virtual hard disk to an existing virtual machine.

Advanced Network Settings

Static Network Routes

The ntop Virtual Appliance supports end-user configured static network routes. These can be configured from within the Networking section of the Virtual Appliances Management Console.

Firewall

Not currently implemented

Adjusting memory in virtual machine

The default memory allocation for the ntop VA is 256MB. Please adjust accordingly depending on system load, database size(s), and the number of hosts being monitored.


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