Speakers: Devon Merner
Level: Advanced, Lecture
Excerpt: Use Cacti and RRDTool to analyze data gathered from your Macs and more.
Description: Many of us manage environments where we can’t be everywhere at once. When a lab is in a state of disrepair and no one notices until it is too late, this becomes troublesome.
Cacti provides a simple to use, web based platform that can be used to track data from many different places and allows that data to be viewed on easily embedded RRDTool graphs. When public use machines are tampered with due to malicious users, this data becomes invaluable for not only response time, but for long term budgeting and planning.
This platform is not only limited to Mac use, but can also be used to monitor anything that can respond via SNMP. This includes but is not limited to; machine usage, server load and environmental monitoring. The graphs generated can be placed anywhere that a picture can be embedded for the creation of easy monitoring dashboards.
We will go over the process of setting up a Cacti server, creating devices or graphs and how to easily extend SNMP on your devices to provide more data.
You’ll thank yourself later when you propose an idea to management and have the data to back it up.
Attendees should have a general understanding of Simple Network Monitoring Protocol (SNMP).
About the speakers
Devon Merner – IT Support Assistant – University of Waterloo (Twitter: devonmerner)
I began working with the University of Waterloo’s Computer Science Computing Facility department during my 3rd year in high school as part of my cooperative education program in 2012 with my responsibilities being geared towards Research Support. Today, I now work with our department’s Infrastructure Support group while helping out with Mac support in various areas. A few of the areas that I work in include, but are not limited to; server management, network service monitoring, statistical monitoring and Mac image deployments.