Inexpensive bandwidth charts for ASA 5500

[jimmyc_2]

We need to collect some BW usage charts for our ASA interfaces. 

We don't have the expensive Network monitoring software, and we are a very small shop. 

I only need BW and data-drop graphs.  

Any suggestions?

[Marvin Rhoads]

Cacti is open source and can query an ASA via SNMP to generate interface utilization and other graphs.

http://www.cacti.net/

It takes a bit more work to setup than some of the commercial products but the acquisition cost is free.

There is some good community-contributed documentaiton on the cacti.net site. For example, installation is covered step-by-step here:

http://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/contrib/Cacti-Linux-How-To.pdf

[jimmyc_2]

Looks like Cacti requires a WebServer.   Is it possible to run this just on a Windows Laptop?

[Marvin Rhoads · Accepted solution]

You can run it on Windows but it'll put you in a small minority. Instructions are here:

http://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/install_windows.html

Most of the open source community runs on Linux. You can run it on an old laptop and just build a partition and install Linux (or load a hypervisor like Virtualbox and run Linux on that under Windows). The resource requirements for Linux and cacti are quite modest.