Cacti

An operational monitoring and fault management framework built on RRDTool for network and,

Cacti is an open-source operational monitoring and fault management framework and network graphing solution built on RRDTool. It provides distributed, fault-tolerant data collection, template-based automation for devices, graphs and trees, multiple data acquisition methods, plugin extensibility, role-based user and group management, theming, and multi-language support, designed for installations ranging from LAN-sized networks to complex environments with tens of thousands of devices.

Features include device and graph templates supporting SNMP, ICMP, TCP and UDP availability checking; data collection via SNMP OIDs or scripts with remote data collectors for distributed gathering; data queries for multi-dimensional data such as interfaces and storage I/O; discovery and automation for network scans and graph creation rules; and graph viewing options including graph trees, list view, preview mode, and CSV export. Plugins extend functionality, including THold for graph-based fault management, Syslog for log-based fault management, MacTrack for device tracking, Intropage for dashboarding, and Router Configs for router backup and compare. User and group management allows per-graph permissions, and theming and internationalization are supported through built-in themes and partial translations.

Cacti is released under the GNU General Public License.

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Key facts

Starts at: —
Free plan: No
Free trial: No
Open source: Yes

What it does

Distributed data collection
Template based automation
Plugin extensibility
Role based user and group management
Theming
Multi language support
Snmp icmp tcp and udp availability checking
Device templates
Graph templates
Data source templates
Aggregate templates
Color templates
Template import and export
Automation and discovery
Graph trees and list view with bookmarks and search by regular expression regex on graph preview mode and csv export of graph data plus embedding graphs in other websites via image tag when guest user is enabled and plugin support including thold for graph based fault management syslog for log based fault management mactrack for device tracking and notification intropage for dashboarding router configs for router backup and compare and other plugins on the cacti group s github page and user based management with per graph permissions for each user and each user can keep their own graph settings and six built in themes including the classic cacti theme and theming is fully open so any user may copy one theme directory to a new one creating a new theme which can then be modified as desired to change cacti s persona and cacti utilizes jqueryui s theming system so it is possible to further extend cacti using that framework and cacti has been partially translated into several languages for international support and users may contribute to furthering cacti s multiple language support at https translate cacti net and data is collected via snmp oids or scripts and scripts can pull data from databases or run arbitrary code and data collection is controlled by a data input method and data collection can be distributed across many sites using remote data collectors and remote data collectors allow for more resiliency in cacti s data collection framework supporting offline caching in the case of a network interruptions and data collection includes built in snmp support that can use either php s build in snmp support or net snmp binaries provided by your os vendor and data collection can be extended to other protocols through plugins and for example the wmi plugin collects wmi data from windows and other wmi compatible devices and stores in the cacti database for rapid data source creation and updating and ability to retrieve multi dimensional data based upon a cacti concept called a data query and a data query is defined as data that is identified by its index and examples of data queries include multiple network interfaces on a switch each having graphs of packets and bytes per second and various error counters for each interface in a switch or storage i o bytes read written and queue lengths from various mounted file systems on a server and a high speed memory resident php based script service to execute php scripts without the overhead of continually forking binaries which must re interpret the script every time it is called and both multi process and multi thread data collection all the way to the device level for devices that include up to 10 s of thousands of data sources and templating and packaging and multiple template types are included in the base cacti install including device graph data source aggregate and color and device templates allow consolidation of supportable graph templates and data queries for a specific device type including linux servers switches routers firewalls etc and graph templates provide a way to reproduce graphs for various devices inside of your cacti install thus reducing the cost to setup and maintain your cacti installation and data source templates make it easy to store the desired round robin database file structure for your cacti graphs and graph templates and aggregate templates make it easy to create cacti graphs that combine common elements from similar graphs into a single graph and for example aggregate templates are important in showing the aggregate traffic into and out of a router site or region and color templates are used for color rotations inside of aggregate graphs and they make aggregate graphs look more consistent from graph to graph and templates can be imported and exported as either static xml files or in package archives which include all components of a template including the template xml files scripts and data query xml files and discovery and automation and provides automation scheduling of network scans to discover snmp enabled devices and add them to cacti automatically and provides the ability to selectively add graphs to devices based upon pre defined graph creation rules and provides the ability to create custom graph tree and tree branches based upon rules and is extensible to plugins such at the thold plugin which will automatically create fault management alerts based upon rules and graph viewing options and graphs can be grouped into custom graphs trees or through built in site level trees and the graph list view allows users to construct a list of graphs that they ultimately want to view in a single pane of glass and then provides the ability to bookmark that graph page and the graph preview mode displays all of graphs from a single page and from that page users can search for the graphs they are looking for using regular expressions and users can save their own graph settings including render mode number of columns graph title display date display as well as other options and in addition to list view graph trees can be bookmarked for easy access in future browsing sessions or to be shared with other users and graph data can be exported in csv format to be shared with others and when the cacti guest user is enable cacti graphs can be embedded in other websites through a simple image tag and plugins and plugins allow the cacti framework to be extended into other operational aspects within an operations management organization and the cacti group provides support for almost two dozen plugins for various purposes and the thold plugin is used for graph based fault management and the syslog plugin is used for log based fault management and the mactrack plugin is used for device tracking and notification and the intropage plugin is used for dashboarding of the main cacti console page and the router configs plugin supports router backup and compare functions and several other plugins can be found on the cacti groups github page and users and user groups and user based management allows administrators to create users and assign different levels of permissions to the cacti interface and permissions can be specified per graph for each user making cacti suitable for co location situations and each user can keep their own graph settings for varying viewing preferences and theming and internationalization and cacti provides six built in themes including the classic cacti theme in addition to several others and theming is fully open any user may simply copy one theme directory to a new one creating a new theme which can then be modified as desired to change cacti s persona and cacti utilizes jqueryui s theming system and so it is possible to further extend cacti using that framework and cacti has been partially translated into several languages for international support and users may contribute to furthering cacti s multiple language support at https translate cacti net and devices device templates and supports snmp icmp tcp and udp availability checking and includes built in support for meta attributes such as site location and external id for asset tracking and provides automatic graph and data source creation control through automation and discovery and supports extensible attributes through various cacti plugins and graph assignment controlled through device templates which allow associating from one to many graph templates and data queries to their devices and includes built in device templates for generic snmp net snmp windows and cisco routers and switches with much more available from the cacti community and graphs aggregates graph templates and graph items include line x area stack hrule vrule gprint and comment and graph item data sources can be modified either through rrdtool cdef s or vdef s and graph items can leverage average min max and last consolidation functions and graphs and graph templates include both left and right axis support and graph and graph template editing support logical grouping of gprint graph items is provided to the parent graph item for ease of management and graphs and graph templates include support for most of rrdtools graph features including various auto scaling options alternate min and max values and slope mode and graphs can be either controlled by a template or in advanced mode individually created and multiple graphs from a single graph template can be merged into aggregate graphs and data sources templates profiles and defines rrdtools round robin database file structure in cacti and each cacti data source can contain from one to many rrdfile data sources and data collection frequencies are independent of the data source and template and controlled by a data source profile and rrdfile size and retention settings for each data source and template are controlled through data source profiles and each cacti system can contain multiple data source profiles and all can be used concurrently depending on the cacti administrator and data collection polling and data is collected via snmp oids or scripts and scripts can pull data from databases or run arbitrary code and data collection is controlled by a data input method and data collection can be distributed across many sites using remote data collectors and remote data collectors allow for more resiliency in cacti s data collection framework supporting offline caching in the case of a network interruptions and data collection includes built in snmp support that can use either php s build in snmp support or net snmp binaries provided by your os vendor and data collection can be extended to other protocols through plugins and for example the wmi plugin collects wmi data from windows and other wmi compatible devices and stores in the cacti database for rapid data source creation and updating and ability to retrieve multi dimensional data based upon a cacti concept called a data query and a data query is defined as data that is identified by its index and examples of data queries include multiple network interfaces on a switch each having graphs of packets and bytes per second and various error counters for each interface in a switch or storage i o bytes read written and queue lengths from various mounted file systems on a server and a high speed memory resident php based script service to execute php scripts without the overhead of continually forking binaries which must re interpret the script every time it is called and both multi process and multi thread data collection all the way to the device level for devices that include up to 10 s of thousands of data sources and templating and packaging and multiple template types are included in the base cacti install including device graph data source aggregate and color and device templates allow consolidation of supportable graph templates and data queries for a specific device type including linux servers switches routers firewalls etc and graph templates provide a way to reproduce graphs for various devices inside of your cacti install thus reducing the cost to setup and maintain your cacti installation and data source templates make it easy to store the desired round robin database file structure for your cacti graphs and graph templates and aggregate templates make it easy to create cacti graphs that combine common elements from similar graphs into a single graph and for example aggregate templates are important in showing the aggregate traffic into and out of a router site or region and color templates are used for color rotations inside of aggregate graphs and they make aggregate graphs look more consistent from graph to graph and templates can be imported and exported as either static xml files or in package archives which include all components of a template including the template xml files scripts and data query xml files and discovery and automation and provides automation scheduling of network scans to discover snmp enabled devices and add them to cacti automatically and provides the ability to selectively add graphs to devices based upon pre defined graph creation rules and provides the ability to create custom graph tree and tree branches based upon rules and is extensible to plugins such at the thold plugin which will automatically create fault management alerts based upon rules and graph viewing options and graphs can be grouped into custom graphs trees or through built in site level trees and the graph list view allows users to construct a list of graphs that they ultimately want to view in a single pane of glass and then provides the ability to bookmark that graph page and the graph preview mode displays all of graphs from a single page and from that page users can search for the graphs they are looking for using regular expressions and users can save their own graph settings including render mode number of columns graph title display date display as well as other options and in addition to list view graph trees can be bookmarked for easy access in future browsing sessions or to be shared with other users and graph data can be exported in csv format to be shared with others and when the cacti guest user is enable cacti graphs can be embedded in other websites through a simple image tag and plugins and plugins allow the cacti framework to be extended into other operational aspects within an operations management organization and the cacti group provides support for almost two dozen plugins for various purposes and the thold plugin is used for graph based fault management and the syslog plugin is used for log based fault management and the mactrack plugin is used for device tracking and notification and the intropage plugin is used for dashboarding of the main cacti console page and the router configs plugin supports router backup and compare functions and several other plugins can be found on the cacti groups github page and users and user groups and user based management allows administrators to create users and assign different levels of permissions to the cacti interface and permissions can be specified per graph for each user making cacti suitable for co location situations and each user can keep their own graph settings for varying viewing preferences and theming and internationalization and cacti provides six built in themes including the classic cacti theme in addition to several others and theming is fully open any user may simply copy one theme directory to a new one creating a new theme which can then be modified as desired to change cacti s persona and cacti utilizes jqueryui s theming system and so it is possible to further extend cacti using that framework and cacti has been partially translated into several languages for international support and users may contribute to furthering cacti s multiple language support at https translate cacti net and about cacti and cacti provides a robust and extensible operational monitoring and fault management framework for users around the world and is also a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of rrdtool s data storage and graphing functionality and cacti includes a fully distributed and fault tolerant data collection framework advanced template based automation features for devices graphs and trees multiple data acquisition methods the ability to be extended through plugins role based user group and domain management features in addition to a theming engine and multiple language support all right out of the box and all of this is wrapped in an intuitive easy to use interface that makes sense for lan sized installations up to complex networks with tens of thousands of devices and get more details about cacti and download cacti and go to the download page and support and do you need help are you having problems do you want to know what other users are doing with cacti be sure to check out the cacti discussion forums and with over 160 000 posts and 20 000 users there is a good chance that your question has already been asked by another user and use google s index of the forum if you are searching for something in particular and licensing and cacti is released under the gnu general public license and sponsorship and cacti is pleased to announce the following have sponsored us via github sponsorship and to find out more about ways to contrubte visit our contribute page and bronze and baires dev and visit baires dev and litslink and visit litslink and latest news and jun 15 2026 and cacti 1 2 31 released and mar 23 2025 and cacti 1 2 30 released and feb 02 2025 and cacti 1 2 29 released and oct 06 2024 and cacti 1 2 28 released and jul 29 2024 and cacti 1 2 27 released and dec 23 2023 and cacti 1 2 26 released and sep 06 2023 and cacti 1 2 25 released and feb 27 2023 and cacti 1 2 24 released and jan 02 2023 and cacti 1 2 23 released and aug 14 2022 and cacti 1 2 22 released and github api and donate and rrdtool and back to top and copyright 2004 2021 the cacti group inc cacti is the registered trademark the cacti group inc and made by bv it solutions ltd and cacti info and what is cacti and what is spine and features and downloads and changelog and development and support and cacti and report an issue and github and support and documentation and manuals and mailing lists and faq and forums and release 1 2 31 and features and devices device templates and supports snmp icmp tcp and udp availability checking and includes built in support for meta attributes such as site location and external id for asset tracking and provides automatic graph and data source creation control through automation and discovery and supports extensible attributes through various cacti plugins and graph assignment controlled through device templates which allow associating from one to many graph templates and data queries to their devices and includes built in device templates for generic snmp net snmp windows and cisco routers and switches with much more available from the cacti community and graphs aggregates graph templates and graph items include line x area stack hrule vrule gprint and comment and graph item data sources can be modified either through rrdtool cdef s or vdef s and graph items can leverage average min max and last consolidation functions and graphs and graph templates include both left and right axis support and graph and graph template editing support logical grouping of gprint graph items is provided to the parent graph item for ease of management and graphs and graph templates include support for most of rrdtools graph features including various auto scaling options alternate min and max values and slope mode and graphs can be either controlled by a template or in advanced mode individually created and multiple graphs from a single graph template can be merged into aggregate graphs and data sources templates profiles and defines rrdtools round robin database file structure in cacti and each cacti data source can contain from one to many rrdfile data sources and data collection frequencies are independent of the data source and template and controlled by a data source profile and rrdfile size and retention settings for each data source and template are controlled through data source profiles and each cacti system can contain multiple data source profiles and all can be used concurrently depending on the cacti administrator and data collection polling and data is collected via snmp oids or scripts and scripts can pull data from databases or run arbitrary code and data collection is controlled by a data input method and data collection can be distributed across many sites using remote data collectors and remote data collectors allow for more resiliency in cacti s data collection framework supporting offline caching in the case of a network interruptions and data collection includes built in snmp support that can use either php s build in snmp support or net snmp binaries provided by your os vendor and data collection can be extended to other protocols through plugins and for example the wmi plugin collects wmi data from windows and other wmi compatible devices and stores in the cacti database for rapid data source creation and updating and ability to retrieve multi dimensional data based upon a cacti concept called a data query and a data query is defined as data that is identified by its index and examples of data queries include multiple network interfaces on a switch each having graphs of packets and bytes per second and various error counters for each interface in a switch or storage i o bytes read written and queue lengths from various mounted file systems on a server and a high speed memory resident php based script service to execute php scripts without the overhead of continually forking binaries which must re interpret the script every time it is called and both multi process and multi thread data collection all the way to the device level for devices that include up to 10 s of thousands of data sources and templating and packaging and multiple template types are included in the base cacti install including device graph data source aggregate and color and device templates allow consolidation of supportable graph templates and data queries for a specific device type including linux servers switches routers firewalls etc and graph templates provide a way to reproduce graphs for various devices inside of your cacti install thus reducing the cost to setup and maintain your cacti installation and data source templates make it easy to store the desired round robin database file structure for your cacti graphs and graph templates and aggregate templates make it easy to create cacti graphs that combine common elements from similar graphs into a single graph and for example aggregate templates are important in showing the aggregate traffic into and out of a router site or region and color templates are used for color rotations inside of aggregate graphs and they make aggregate graphs look more consistent from graph to graph and templates can be imported and exported as either static xml files or in package archives which include all components of a template including the template xml files scripts and data query xml files and discovery and automation and provides automation scheduling of network scans to discover snmp enabled devices and add them to cacti automatically and provides the ability to selectively add graphs to devices based upon pre defined graph creation rules and provides the ability to create custom graph tree and tree branches based upon rules and is extensible to plugins such at the thold plugin which will automatically create fault management alerts based upon rules and graph viewing options and graphs can be grouped into custom graphs trees or through built in site level trees and the graph list view allows users to construct a list of graphs that they ultimately want to view in a single pane of glass and then provides the ability to bookmark that graph page and the graph preview mode displays all of graphs from a single page and from that page users can search for the graphs they are looking for using regular expressions and users can save their own graph settings including render mode number of columns graph title display date display as well as other options and in addition to list view graph trees can be bookmarked for easy access in future browsing sessions or to be shared with other users and graph data can be exported in csv format to be shared with others and when the cacti guest user is enable cacti graphs can be embedded in other websites through a simple image tag and plugins and plugins allow the cacti framework to be extended into other operational aspects within an operations management organization and the cacti group provides support for almost two dozen plugins for various purposes and the thold plugin is used for graph based fault management and the syslog plugin is used for log based fault management and the mactrack plugin is used for device tracking and notification and the intropage plugin is used for dashboarding of the main cacti console page and the router configs plugin supports router backup and compare functions and several other plugins can be found on the cacti groups github page and users and user groups and user based management allows administrators to create users and assign different levels of permissions to the cacti interface and permissions can be specified per graph for each user making cacti suitable for co location situations and each user can keep their own graph settings for varying viewing preferences and theming and internationalization and cacti provides six built in themes including the classic cacti theme in addition to several others and theming is fully open any user may simply copy one theme directory to a new one creating a new theme which can then be modified as desired to change cacti s persona and cacti utilizes jqueryui s theming system and so it is possible to further extend cacti using that framework and cacti has been partially translated into several languages for international support and users may contribute to furthering cacti s multiple language support at https translate cacti net and github api and donate and rrdtool and back to top and copyright 2004 2021 the cacti group inc cacti is the registered trademark the cacti group inc and made by bv it solutions ltd

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