How to add a new device to Cacti.

Under the Management Tab select Devices.

This will load the devices page from where you can change existing devices or add a new device.

In the top right corner click the add button to add a new device. This will load the Devices page from where all the new information can be entered.

In the Description Tab you enter the name of what you want the device to show up as eg. BC10. Under Host name you can either add the fully qualified host name or the IP address of the host. Under Host Template you can either select a template that you have made ( I find the template normally doesn’t work) or you can leave it as non and add the data sources later. Leave Downed Device Detection as SNMP and the other values for Ping Timeout Value and Ping Retry Count as default.

SNMP Version can be changed to version 2, you could slect Version 3 if you like or if the device requires it, mostly I don’t because version 2 will suffice with less to fill in. Community string needs to be filled in with the community string you put onto the device you wish to monitor. SNMP port can be left as deauflt unless you set the port number on the device to be something different or the device deafualts to a different port. SNMP Timeout and Max OID’s can be left as default. Notes can be anything you want to write about the device for future reffernce.

Once you have filled out everything, click the create button at the bottom right of the page to create the device.

If you created it properly you should get something at the top of the page that is similar to this.

BC10 (***.***.***.***)
SNMP Information System:******* Uptime: ***** Hostname: *****-******-bc10 Location: ****** Contact:******* Otherwise you may likely get if either the device is unresponvie or incorrectly set up. If you get this you will need to change the setting till you get no SNMP errors.

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BC8 (***.***.***.***) SNMP Information SNMP error