Below we will detail the process of configuring an Axigen machine into the Cacti application. Please keep the Axigen MIB file close, so that the configuration of Cacti can be made easier. Also, have in mind that the steps below are basic, but representative.
We will skip the Cacti installation instructions as they are fully detailed in the Cacti Manual (http://docs.cacti.net/manual:088:1_installation#installation) and get directly to the process of adding a new host to the pool of monitored systems and devices.
After logging into the Cacti Web administration interface with the administrator account, click on the "Devices" link found in the left pane.
In the upper right corner there is an "Add" link, which is used to add the new host to be monitored. By default, if there are no hosts configured and this is a fresh installation of Cacti, the localhost is already monitored and graphs of locally available information are already created.
After clicking on the Add link, a parameter form is displayed to allow the configuration of the host’s parameters. We will mention the most important parameters which are relevant to Axigen:
- The "Description" field is required by Cacti to be used in the hosts list and graph names. We suggest a name that includes the word "Axigen" in order to easily identify the correct host in case multiple devices / hosts are displayed in this list;
- The "Host" field tells Cacti to which hostname or IP address to connect to in order to retrieve graph information;
- The "Host template" parameter contains the type of the host to be added. It is recommended to set this parameter to Generic SNMP-enabled Host, although it can have the value none;
- This value can be of help since Cacti will save you from additional configuration by automatically setting the appropriate parameters specific to an SNMP enabled host, without requiring a manual configuration;
- The "SNMP Version" parameter tells Cacti which SNMP protocol version to use in the process of communicating with the configured host; Axigen uses an SNMP version 2 protocol implementation. You need to set this parameter before configuring the "Downed Device Detection" setting.
- The "SNMP Community" parameter must match the "SNMPCommunity" configuration setting made in the Axigen WebAdmin interface in order for Cacti to be able to contact the Axigen SNMP agent.
- It is recommend to set the "Downed Device Detection" parameter to the value SNMP. This will tell Cacti to check for the host’s availability through the SNMP protocol rather by the ping system tool that, in many cases, cannot run since the Cacti application is running as the same user as the web server. Running ping in most cases requires root user privileges which constitutes a high security risk if the machine running Cacti can be reached from the Internet.
Please note that other configuration parameters that were not mentioned are to be used with the default values provided by Cacti.
After clicking the "Create" button, the new host will be added to the list of hosts and the screen will display the settings of the freshly created host. As a troubleshooting option, Cacti tries to contact the SNMP agent of the host and displays in the upper left corner, next to the menu pane, a status message of the SNMP agent similar to the one below:
If you receive an SNMP error message, please review the settings of the host, especially the "SNMP Version" and "SNMP Community" parameters.