Cacti: Monitoring network traffic

We use cacti to query our switch and record network traffic. Login to https://cacti.mayfirst.org/ (password in keyringer) to view network traffic. Use the “mayfirst” username to get a simplified view that only shows graphs. The admin user is only needed to trouble shoot or change graphs.

Some things to keep in mind:

  • The upstream graph shows all traffic in and typically hovers around 100Mbit/second
  • All other graphs include internal traffic (which includes database queries) that are not recorded in our upstream

Setup

Most of the configuration is in the database - so when moving or re-installing be sure to import the database backup. You can optionally recover the RRD files from /var/lib/cacti/rra to recover the history.

Also, the switch routes all traffic via our upstream, so the cacti server must have an IP on the same range to ensure UDP and other traffic is not filtered.

Maintenance

Login as the admin user.

To modify a graph title:

  1. Click Management -> Graphs
  2. Click on the graph to modify
  3. Click “Unlock Graph”
  4. Edit the title and click save