Manage Data Center Rack Like A Boss With RackTables

Are you a Data Center administrator and searching for a tool that helps to manage your Data Center assets like servers, switches, routers etc., then RackTables may help you. RackTables is a web based Data Center asset management tool that helps the Data Center administrators to document the hardware assets, network addresses, space in racks, networks configuration and much more.

Features

– IPv4/IPv6 address management.
– Rackspace documentation.
– Full support of Unicode for user’s data.
– Tags.
– 802.1Q VLAN management.
– Permission control.
– CWDM and DWDM channel grids.
– pluggable (SFP, XFP, XENPAK…) transceivers.
– neighbor discovery via CDP and LLDP.
– integration with Cacti and Munin.

In this how-to, let us setup a RackTables on CentOS 6.5. Although it will work on all RHEL, Scientific Linux 6.x versions.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, we should have a working LAMP stack. Refer the following links to setup LAMP stack on CentOS 6.5 and earlier versions.

Install LAMP Server (Apache, MySQL, PHP) On CentOS 6

Install LAMP Server (Apache, MariaDB, PHP) On CentOS 6

Install the following php extensions:

# yum install php-common php-cli php-ldap php-snmp php-pcntl

Setup Database for RackTables

Log in to your database server and create database and database user for Opigno. In my case, i am going to create a database called “racktablesdb” and a user “racktablesuser” with password “centos”.

# mysql -u root -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 50
Server version: 5.5.35 MySQL Community Server (GPL) by Remi

Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> create database racktablesdb;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL ON racktablesdb.* TO racktablesuser@localhost IDENTIFIED by 'centos';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> exit
Bye

Getting latest RackTables Version

Go to the RackTables download page and get the latest version.

# wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/racktables/files/RackTables-0.20.6.zip

Extract file with command:

# unzip RackTables-0.20.6.zip

The files will be extracted in your current directory. Copy the contents of the wwwroot folder to your apache root folder.

# cp -fr RackTables-0.20.6/wwwroot/ /var/www/html/racktables

Set write permission to racktables folder:

# chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/racktables/

Don’t forget to set permission back after installation.

Create a settings.php file and make it writable as show below.

# touch /var/www/html/racktables/inc/secret.php
# chmod 666 /var/www/html/racktables/inc/secret.php

Now restart apache and mysql services.

# service httpd restart
# service mysqld restart

Begin Installation

Navigate to http://ip-address/racktables or http://domain-name/racktables from your web browser and follow the onscreen instructions.

At the first time you will see an error that says Configuration error as shown in the screenshot. The errors are normal and they will be taken care by installer during installation. Click on the link says: here.

Configuration error - Mozilla Firefox_001Click proceed to Continue:

RackTables installation: step 1 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_002Now the installer will check for the necessary prerequisites. If all seems OK, click Proceed to continue.

RackTables installation: step 2 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_004Enter your mysql database name, username and password and click Retry.

RackTables installation: step 3 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_005Click proceed:

RackTables installation: step 3 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_006Click Proceed:

RackTables installation: step 4 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_007Set racktables admin console password:

RackTables installation: step 5 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_008Click Proceed:

RackTables installation: step 5 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_009Congratulations! RackTables installation is complete. After pressing Proceed you will enter the system.

RackTables installation: step 6 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_010Authenticate with admin username and password that you created in the step 5.

RackTables installation: step 6 of 6 - Mozilla Firefox_011

This is how my RackTables Administrator dashboard looks:

Main page - Mozilla Firefox_012

Set racktables directory write permission back to previous state with command:

# chmod -R go-w /var/www/html/racktables/

That’s it. It is time to learn RackTables to manage your Server and Data Center assets. Learn RackTables project has a wiki for users. Have fun! Good Luck!

Reference Link:

RackTables Home page