Cacti: How to monitor Windows Hosts?

Question

I have Cacti installed on a computer and SNMP enabled on my Windows Hosts (Community string : public)

How do I get the Windows Network Utilization, HDD, CPU, and more?

I would like a guideline on how to create and add hosts and graphs and I want to get an update every 30 seconds as well.

Solution 1

Except for the 30 second polling, this is pretty standard. Read the manuals here: http://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/faq.html

1. Using Cacti

How do I create traffic graphs?

[snip]

Now that you have working SNMP support, follow these steps.

Click Devices on Cacti's menu.

Click Add to add a new device.

Type a description, hostname, management IP, and SNMP community. Make sure to select "Generic SNMP-enabled Host" under Host Template and click Create.

Click Create Graphs for this Host at the top of the page.

You should see one or more interfaces listed under the Data Query [SNMP - Interface Statistics] box. Place a check next to each interface that you want to graph. Below the box, select type of graph that you want to create (bits, bytes, summation, etc).

Click Create, and Create again on the following screen to create your graphs.

Normally Cacti (and MRTG) poll every 5 minutes. If you want to make this more aggressive (make sure you understand what and why you are doing this) you can change the polling service to run as frequently or as infrequently as you wish. My suggestion would be to start with the standard polling interval first.

Solution 2

My concern is that you're requesting 30 second resolution. Are you sure you're not looking for real-time monitoring ( Real time monitoring of MS Windows servers and their services )? And are you sure you need it?

In two weeks, are you still going to care about 30 second resolution? Is it going to be worth the hit on bandwidth (and processor cycles) to create the data and to move those bits around?

There are techniques available to break it down into a smaller resolution, if you've got that sort of bandwidth/diskspace/pain tolerance.

Here's a discussion on discrete resolution polling from 2006: http://forums.cacti.net/about12373.html&highlight=

In the past 8 or so years in IT, I've found that if you're trying to do something that no one else has done, you're either on the bleeding edge, or you're doing it wrong. It's up to you to decide where you stand.

Comments

[Matt Simmons]

change your community string

[John Gardeniers]

Your question suggests to me that you haven't even looked at the documentation. That should be your starting point.