Cacti and Nagios integration dashboard

[perldork]

Hi,

Started working on this a few weeks ago, hopefully in a few months I will have a public release, wanted to just get a sense of whether anyone thinks this would be useful for them.

the dashboard uses Cacti to get host SNMP information, the only dependency betwen Nagios and Cacti for this is that the Nagios host must be named the same in Nagios as in Cacti. The non-trend graphs I generate in real-time using PHP's SNMP functions + Image_Graph.

CLickin on the Nagios icon on the dashboard takes the user to the Nagios host screen, clicking on the Cactus takes them to the Cacti page for the host, clicking on the thumbnails of Cacti trend data takes them to the static Cacti images (created using the graph export functionality of Cacti).

I might also do this as a Cacti plugin instead of a standalone integration project since the Nagios integration is much lighter-weight than the Cacti info.

Feedback/comments/ideas welcome , this is in its' infancy so the look/feel/layout/functionality all may change significantly before any release happens.

[perldork]

Top of dashboard

[perldork]

Bottom of dashboard page

[ddonohue]

That's freaking nice, would be a good addition to our current monitoring enviroment.

Donohue

[perldork]

Thanks , hoping to get functionality in it to detect both Net-SNMP and MS SNMP agents (right now just works with Net-SNMP) to produce similar dashboards for both agents before I release this.

I think the final release will basically provide an easy to use API/set of functions that the person installing this can use to create their own HTML dashboard without having to know much more than basic HTML and basic PHP, e.g. how to insert a <?php print make_cpu_graph() ?> call here and there in their HTML template .

I also have a page that will show one metric for all hosts, e.g show all load averages for all hosts configured in Cacti .. each metric graph is linked to pop open the host detail windw shown above when the graph is clicked on.

[gg234]

This is what i am looking for long time and this will support both Nagios 1.X and 2.X versions or only nagios 2.X

i am really want to test your plugin to implement in my environment.If you don't mine send me the download link or private message so that i am really thankful for your hardwork.

Thanks for your help

[perldork]

Hi,

Not ready for release yet, sorry. The Nagios integration is through calling the Nagios page for the host with HTTP, so if it doesn't map correctly for Nagios 1.x I would think that it would be easy to make it work.

The integration is pretty straight-forward, easy to implement yourself or with a developer if you know one :
1) Scrape the HTML from Nagios for the host detail table using the host detail CGI of Nagios, use some simple replacements to make sure the Nagios links point back to the Nagios instance you are running.
2) Configure Cacti to export graphs using the Classic style of export
3) Write a little database glue code to look up the IDs for host graphs from the Cacti database using the passed in host name as the key
4) Generate URLs for the Cacti graphs
5) Use the SNMP authentication information taken from the Cacti databse in your scripts to generate whatever additional 'real time' graphs or displays you wish to have

I will add Nagios 1.x compatibility as a feature to it when it is ready .. I am still not sure if I want to do this as a plugin or not; the advantages of having it as a plugin would be less code I maintain to access Cacti information, however I am currently using this for end user views much more than for administrator views ... I don't want my customers to have to login to Cacti just to see this one page .. this is the part of the dashboard I haven't quite worked out yet .. what is the best way to authenticate for this view.

Currently I use the same configuration I use for Nagios to authenticate the user as Nagios uses HTTP AUTH and that limits their view into Nagios, but that obviously doesn't limit the view into Cacti since the graphs are all exported to disk for the view.

Maybe having Cacti used as the authentication source would be preferable, that way the Nagios user/pass just has to match the Cacti user/pass and I can use Curl to get the Nagios information using the users' username and password as sent to Cacti ...

Once I work out the best way to authenticate or best options for authentication I will package it all up as a release one way or another.

Thanks for the feedback, ideas and feedback welcome.

[apmannen]

Im really lookng forward to this one. Cant wait for release to try it out. Keep posting about your progress

[perldork]

Hi,

That is nice to hear, thank you.

I have decided to do my release of this as a Cacti plugin, I think that will be the nicest way to contribute back to this project.

The first version might just work for hosts with the Net-SNMP agent . . my long term goal is to have it alos work for MS SNMP and for at a minimum Cisco devices too (obviously with different charts :p), but for a first release might just do Net-SNMP to get feedback on what people want and do not want / like / do not like about it.

[jer00n]

Hi,

is there any chance I can give your dashboard a try?

jeroen

[perldork]

Hi Jeroen,

I will create a static demo of it using output from a host on my home network , I will post the URL here when I have it .. I will do my best to get this up in within 7 days fom the time of this post.

Thank you for your interest in this .. pretty much what you see is what you get :p, clicking on the Cacti thumbnails takes you to the historical graphs for the graphs shown, the iframe in the middle shows storage utilization for the host. Pretty straight-forward stuff.

[jer00n]

Pereldork,

I think what you are creating now is something that a lot of people have been waiting for any clue when your files will be available? It's nice of you to setup a demo for me, but I can't wait to try it out myself

jeroen

[perldork]

I hope to have a release no later than end of September, might just have Net-SNMP support at the point but I do plan on releasing it as soon as possible, I have to now learn the Cacti plugin framework and then massage my code to work as a plugin .

[pweaver]

As the others have mentioned, Id love to beta this on my server if possible!!!!


lemme know.

[fozzy]

nice! looking forward to this one.

Luca