Chapter 1, Installing Cacti, will take you through the installation and configuration of Cacti. You will also learn how to upgrade an existing installation. The final part of the chapter will get you familiar with the different features of Cacti.

Chapter 2, Using Graphs to Monitor Networks and Devices, will teach you how to create graphs using RRDtool. Cacti uses RRDtool to store the polled data. In addition to storing data, RRDtool is also used to create performance graphs. This chapter also shows you how to add new devices and performance measurement graphs to them. Then you'll learn how to group devices using the Cacti tree. Cacti provides a facility to create templates for data, graphs, and hosts.

Chapter 3, Creating and Using Templates, will teach you how to create data templates and apply them to devices. You will create a threshold-based graph template and change the appearance of the graph depending on the data value. This chapter will also teach you how to create a selection of SNMP-based graphs and data queries, and how to import a template from the template repository and export our own host template.

Chapter 4, User Management, teaches you how to create a user and apply basic settings to it. Then we discuss different kinds of permissions, user authentication, and how to import a list of users through the command line interface.

Chapter 5, Data Management, will teach you about retrieving data for graphing with Cacti, which is more than just pulling SNMP data. Cacti allows several different methods for data retrieval. This chapter teaches you how to create your own data input methods and create custom scripts to gather remote data. After you complete this chapter, you will be comfortably able to manage a Cacti system.

Chapter 6, Cacti Maintenance, shows you how to create backups of your Cacti installation and how to restore it, as well as providing information on how to keep your Cacti instance clean of dead hosts and files. This chapter is dedicated to Cacti management.

Chapter 7, Network and Server Monitoring, will teach you how to set up Cisco network devices and prepare Windows systems to be monitored using the WMI interface. You will be provided with several instructions to configure your network devices, windows servers, and VMware ESX servers. Each of the different systems requires different methods and configuration tasks in order to poll the performance data.

Chapter 8, Plugin Architecture, shows you how to extend the capabilities of your Cacti instance with the available Plugin Architecture. Plugins allow end-users to implement missing features or create specific enhancements needed for internal corporate usage. At the end of this chapter, you will be able to add new features and functionality to your Cacti instance using external plugins.

Chapter 9, Plugins, provides an overview of the general plugin design based on the ntop plugin. It describes commonly used plugins and also helps you create your first plugin.

Chapter 10, Threshold Monitoring with Thold, provides an overview of the Thold plugin. It describes the different threshold types available. It shows you how to create a threshold and also helps you to build a threshold template and assign it to a data source.

Chapter 11, Enterprise Reporting, shows you how to define reports with the free Nectar and the commercially supported CereusReporting plugins.

Chapter 12, Cacti Automation for NOC, provides an overview of Cacti automation. It describes the process of using the CLI to add permissions, devices, and trees. It also guides you through the process of installation and usage of Autom8.

Appendix A, Mobile Access / Administration, gives some further information on how to access your Cacti installation with mobile devices.

Appendix B, Online Resources, gives more information on the other online resources available.

Appendix C, Further Information, gives more information on RRDtool, SNMP, and Cacti forums.

Appendix D, Pop Quiz Answers, gives answers to the pop-quizzes which appear at the end of each chapter.