Cacti the complete NMS solution for the PGW and HSI

 
 

What is cacti?

Cacti is the complete NMS solution for monitoring the Cisco PGW 2200 and HSI.  Cacti is a front end to RRDTool, it stores all of the necessary information to create graphs and populate them with data in a MySQL database. The front end is completely PHP driven. Along with being able to maintain Graphs, Data Sources, and Round Robin Archives in a database, cacti handles the data gathering.


What are the costs?

Cacti is released under the GNU General Public License, meaning that the software is completely free with no strings attached. It can be installed on Linux, Solaris or Windows, but preferably on Linux, so once again no cost.

So costs include machine, Linux build , Cacti implementation and PGW integration.


Alternatively Iforb offer a hosting service where we will remotely host the service on our Cacti farm.  In this case the costs are limited to the system integration and a service fee.

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Integration options

Existing Cacti integration:    If you have an existing Cacti implementation we will integrate your PGW into the current setup. This includes all Cacti and PGW scripting required to provide full PGW visibility through your Cacti interface.


New Cacti installation: We will build a new Cacti based on Ubuntu Linux and ship it to you with full PGW monitoring pre-configured.


Cacti hosting: If you wish to outsource your Cacti implementation we will provide a hosted Cacti service. Using VPN links our Cacti farm will monitor your PGWs (and any other network elements required). You will have full user access to your Cacti partition.


Cacti Features

  1. •Unlimited number of graph items can be defined for each graph optionally utilizing CDEFs or data sources from within cacti.

  2. •Automatic grouping of GPRINT graph items to AREA, STACK, and LINE[1-3] to allow for quick re-sequencing of graph items.

  3. •Auto-Padding support to make sure graph legend text lines up.

  4. •Graph data can be manipulated using the CDEF math functions built into RRDTool. These CDEF functions can be defined in cacti and can be used globally on each graph.

  5. •Support for all of RRDTool's graph item types including AREA, STACK, LINE[1-3], GPRINT, COMMENT, VRULE, and HRULE.


More examples of live sites which use Cacti, Just click on an of the links and go live into their Cacti

How is PGW / HSI integration achieved?

This is done through the implementation of SNMP queries towards the PGWs and Cacti based scripts which regularly poll the PGWs via a secure SSH restricted access mml login to extract the relevant data.


User Management

  1. •User based management allows administrators to create users and assign different levels of permissions to the cacti interface.

  2. •Permissions can be specified per-graph for each user, making cacti suitable for co location situations.

  3. •Each user can keep their own graph settings for varying viewing preferences.

What can be graphed from the PGW?

  1. •Graph PGW Master /Standby status

  2. •SS7 link/Linkset/Destination status, individual and total

  3. •ISDN PRI/BRI links

  4. •Gateway/E1/T1/Trunk Group Utilization /SIP/H323 - total and %

  5. ✴In service / Active calls (IN or OUT) / Blocked

  6. •Call success/failure - Per 15 min / 1 hr / 24 hr

  7. •Calls per second

  8. •Ethernet traffic load / hard disk.

  9. •Critical/major/minor alarms & Overload Level

  10. •M3UA/SUA associations


Thresholds and alarms: Cacti allows thresholds to be set in either direction on any data points and will raise alarms with email notification of any thresholds passed.

Global and individual email notification for triggered thresholds

Downloads          

Cisco PGW 2200 and HSI Cacti integration V.1.4_20090528.pdf


Request a trail access to a live Cacti implementation

Contact us at info@iforb.com for access to our demo system.