Table of Contents - Paessler AG

1 2015 Paessler AGAll rights reserved. No parts of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means graphic,electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrievalsystems without the written permission of the that are referred to in this document may be either trademarks and/or registered trademarksof the respective owners. The publisher and the author make no claim to these every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this document, the publisher and the authorassume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of informationcontained in this document or from the use of programs and source code that may accompany it.

2 In noevent shall the publisher and the author be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damagecaused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this : Januar 2015 in NurembergPRTG Dat a Ext ract orContents3 Table of ContentsPart 1 Introduction5 Part 2 Download and Getting Started8 Part 3 Requirements and Setup10 Part 4 Running the Data Extractor14 Part 5 Database Setup191 Database Schema Description21 Part 6M onitoring the Data Extraction30 Part 7 Demo Reporting330 IndexPart 1: Introduction | 1 IntroductionWelcome to the PRTG Data Extractor, a free network tool for PRTG Network Monitor!

3 This toolenables you to retrieve monitoring data and raw data from your PRTG installation. The DataExtractor writes this data into an Microsoft SQL server database. So you as PRTG user have thepossibility to process PRTG data further: You can generate your own monitoring data reportsexactly adapted for your intended present document describes the underlying concepts of the PRTG Data Extractor andshows how to use it. Note: In order to use the Data Extractor, you need to have at least basicknowledge about and experience with databases and reporting systems. The presentdocument does not provide instructions about configuring database and report servers.

4 Wedo not provide any support regarding these basic topics Data Extractor?In the past, PRTG users asked for additional reports and more functions and features for thedata reporting system in PRTG. These wishes and suggestions rather vary and so make it a bitinconvenient for a standard solution in PRTG, so our possibilities at Paessler were limited tofulfill all specific user requests. We developed the Data Extractor to meet these manifold userrequirements. If you have higher demands on your reporting system than the availablestandard reports in PRTG, then try out the Data Extractor. The PRTG Data Extractor is free forPRTG users and does not require any licensing costs.

5 How Does It Work?PRTG uses its own integrated high performance database to guarantee optimized high speedstorage of monitoring data. This data cannot be accessed directly. It is only possible to readthe data via PRTG's Application Programming Interface (API). Unfortunately, this approach isneither high-performance nor straightforward. Because of this, we designed the DataExtractor. It can access the data using the PRTG API and stores the data into a relationaldatabase. With a corresponding reporting server of your choice you can then create reportssuitable to your needs. For best practice, we recommend you to run the data extraction oncea day to retrieve new data.

6 You can schedule the run and scale it by using multiple systems. Please refer to section Requirement s and Set up to see what you need for the Data Extractorand the subsequent sections about how to use Advantages in Comparison to the Standard PRTG Reporting SystemIf you use the PRTG Data Extractor, you will gain the following precious functionalities inaddition to the reporting system as it is included in your PRTG installation: You are able to customize monitoring data reports in a completely individual way. You can use any reporting system you like, already know, or have the developers for. A system that has the only purpose "reporting" usually provides more options than everyreport feature we could integrate into 1: Introduction | LimitationsThere are only minor disadvantages when using the PRTG Data Extractor.

7 These are negligiblethough if you need richer reports than PRTG itself provides. Creating a report will take longer than accessing the same data via the PRTG web interface. The latest monitoring data cannot be accessed. Only data that was already retrieved by theData Extractor can be accessed, of course. Due to limitations of the PRTG API, it is not possible to extract sensor data with a scanninginterval of 12 hours or 2 Download and Getting 2: Download and Getting Started | 2 Download and Getting StartedGetting the Data Extractor started is straightforward: Download the ZIP file DataExtractor on Extract all files into one folder of your choice on a system from where you can reach yourPRTG core server and your database further installation steps are required.

8 You can launch the Data Extractor by opening Dat aExt ract 3 Requirements and 3: Requirements and Setup | 3 Requirements and SetupIn order to extract monitoring data from PRTG and generate corresponding reports, you musthave the following systems installed and running: PRTG Core Server: Version or later; optionally an additional PRTG installation Microsoft SQL Server: SQL Server 2012 (recommended) Report ing ServerDepending on the size of your installation and the expected traffic of the reports, you caneither run everything on the same system or use separate servers. We cannot provide generalrecommendations regarding this because it is specific to your setup.

9 Please see the sectionsbelow for detailed Core ServerYou need a running PRTG installation for the Data Extractor (it is explicitly only designed forPRTG Network Monitor and has no other use!). The Data Extractor requires a PRTG core serverversion or later for full ional PRTG Inst allat ionIt is not mandatory to run an additional PRTG installation. However, we strongly recommend toset up a second PRTG installation for the Data Extractor to avoid any influences on your livesystem. You can use the PRTG Freeware edit ion for this purpose so this approach will notcost you any money for licensing. This additional PRTG installation has only the job to providethe monitoring data via its API.

10 After downloading and installing the PRTG Freeware edition,deactivate its PRTG Probe Service because it will not be needed for the purpose of : Use always the same version of PRTG as on your production system! You can findthe PRTG software version number under Set up | PRTG St at us | Sy st em St at us in the running the actual data extraction from your additional PRTG installation, you have toaccomplish the following steps (please see the PRTG Manual for details):1. Stop the PRTG Core Service. 2. Replace the whole local PRTG data directory with a copy of the data directory of your PRTG live Restart the PRTG Core Perform API calls to pause all notifications so you will not receive any false 3: Requirements and Setup | Note: We strongly recommend you to define scheduled tasks on this system which performthese steps every night before the data extraction.