How To Set Up Cacti In Ubuntu Server To Monitoring Windows Client

4 min readApr 25, 2018

Introduction

This article will guide you thorough setting up Cacti in Ubuntu Server to monitoring Windows client, like a CPU or Harddisk usage. I’m using Ubuntu Server as Host and Windows 10 as Client. We will use the SNMP protocol for monitoring.

Prerequisite

I assume you have installed and configured LAMP in your Ubuntu Server.

Topology

This is simple and we will only monitoring 1 client, more allowed but not to less (wtf what will we monitoring if 0 client? just jokes guys).

Install Cacti

sudo apt-get install cacti cacti-spine

If you want a faster way to poll servers for information than the default php script cmd.php, you need to install cacti-spine.

Popup message will appear like this just select OK and Enter.

It will ask you for a webserver that you will use it, we will choose Apache2 since that’s what we installed in the dependencies. Then, type your password and confirmation password to make database and password login in Cacti.

Wait until installing process success.

Configure SNMP In Windows 10

Open Run and type “control appwiz.cpl” .

Click on Turn Windows features on or off.

Scroll down and check SNMP, then click OK and wait until installing process success.

If SNMP is already installed, open Run again and type “services.msc”.

Scroll down and double click on SNMP Service.

Add Community and hosts like picture below. We will use this Community to configure Cacti.

Dont Forget to restart SNMP Service. Click on “Restart the service”.

Login Cacti

Open your browser and type http://192.168.100.11/cacti/. Login use admin and type your password.

Create Device

Click Console → Devices.

Click Add or icon + on top right corner.

Configure like picture below. You can describe this device with anything. If you do not know the meaning of “Komputerku Dewek”, it means “My Computer”, I use Javanese language.

Type “windowsclient” in SNMP Community as we typed earlier.

Click Create and scroll up. Check if this connection its OK.

Create Graphs CPU And Harddisk

Click Console → Devices and click in your Devices. We want to add 2 data and we will use SNMP to get CPU and Harddisk information on Computer Client. Scroll down and set like picture below.

Add 2 Data Query, Mounted Partitions to get information about Harddisk and Processor Information to get information about CPU. If you add Data Query, be sure to show up Success. Save and wait for a moment to process make Graphics.

Monitoring With Graphic

Click graphs.

If it does not appear anything, click the Preview View button in the top right corner.

If successful it will appear some graphics that show information CPU and Harddisk. If graphic appears but the percentage does not change, try to wait at least 8 hours for graphics to show percentage.