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Now that you have installed and set up Essentials, you must configure the Essentials applications for use. This chapter assumes the following:
This chapter consists of the following sections:
Table 5-1 provides an overview of preparing to use Essentials applications with references to more detailed information about each task. The information in the rest of this chapter follows the same order as the quick reference.
| Task | Steps | References | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Step 1 Create the network inventory by doing either of the following:
and/or
| |||
Step 2 Create a device view. | "Creating a Device View" section | |||
Step 3 Obtain login privileges to Cisco Connection Online (CCO). |
| |||
Step 4 (Optional) Enter device serial numbers for devices that have Contract Connection service contracts by changing the device attributes. | "Changing Device Attributes (Including Serial Numbers)" section | |||
Step 5 (Optional) Perform the following optional Inventory setup tasks:
| ||||
| Step 1 Create a device view with at least two devices. |
| ||
Step 2 Verify that Availability functions correctly. | "Setting Up Availability" section | |||
| Step 1 Configure your routers for Syslog Analysis. | "Configuring Routers and Switches for Syslog Analysis" section | ||
Step 2 Verify that Syslog messages are being processed by the Syslog Analyzer. | "Verifying the Syslog Analyzer" section | |||
| Step 1 Set up file transfer servers. | |||
Step 2 Add the device passwords to the inventory. | ||||
Step 3 Set your Software Management preferences. | ||||
Step 4 Obtain login privileges to CCO for importing software images. |
| |||
Step 5 (Optional) Perform the following optional Software Management setup tasks.
|
This section describes the tasks that you must perform to set up the Inventory application.
You must have at least two managed devices (devices whose inventory information is tracked by Essentials) to verify the correct installation of Essentials. To manage your network, you need to add the device information for all your managed devices.
You can populate your network inventory in the following ways:
To import devices from an NMS database, you might have to work with the system administrator of the host on which the NMS database is running. For more information on importing locally or remotely, refer to the Essentials online help.
The following sections describe how to add device information using these methods. For additional information, refer to Getting Started with Resource Manager Essentials and the online help.
To add device information, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > Inventory > Add Devices. The Add a Single Device dialog box appears.
Step 2 Enter the access information and annotations for one device. You must fill in the Device Name field. All other fields are optional. For more information about these fields, refer to the Essentials online help.
Step 3 Click Next.
Step 4 Click Next. The Enter Authentication Information dialog box appears.
Step 5 If required, complete the Enter Authentication Information dialog box. All fields are optional. For more information about the fields, refer to the Essentials online help.
Step 6 Click Finish. The Single Device Add dialog box appears.
Step 7 Click View Status. The Add/Import Status Summary dialog box appears.
| Device Status | Number of Devices |
|---|---|
Managed | 0 |
Alias | 0 |
Pending | 1 |
Conflicting | 0 |
Suspended | 0 |
Not Responding | 0 |
If the device responded quickly, the Managed row might already contain one device when the Add/Import Status Summary dialog box appears.
Step 9 Click Update on the Add/Import Status Summary dialog box to update device status.
If the pending count goes from 1 to 0 after you click Update and the Managed row has 1 device, Essentials was installed and configured correctly.
You might need to wait several minutes for the device to become managed. Click Update on the Add/Import Status Summary dialog box every minute or so to check the current status of the device.
For additional information, refer to Getting Started with Resource Manager Essentials or online help.
You can import devices by extracting data from your existing data source into a comma-separated value (CSV) file or device integration file (DIF), then using this file as input into the Essentials database. First create a CSV or DIF file, then click Admin > Inventory > Import from File to access the CSV or DIF file and import the device information. For additional information, refer to Getting Started with Resource Manager Essentials or online help.
Before you can import devices from a remote NMS, you must perform several system and NMS configuration steps that are contingent upon the NMS you are using. For additional information, refer to Getting Started with Resource Manager Essentials or online help.
After you configure your system and NMS, select Admin > Inventory >
Import from Remote NMS to import devices from the databases listed in the Remote Database Import dialog box.
To set up and verify the Essentials applications, you must create a static device view (a grouping of devices) that includes at least two devices. For additional information, refer to Getting Started with Resource Manager Essentials or online help.
To create the static view, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > Device Views > Add Static Views. The Add Static Views dialog box appears.
Step 2 Select the view that has the devices you want to add from the Views list. If you have not configured any views previously, select All.
Step 3 Select the devices that you want to add from the Devices list.
Step 4 Click Next. The Save Static View dialog box appears.
Step 5 Enter the view name and view description.
Step 6 Click Finish.
You must have login privileges to CCO to use several features of Essentials, including Contract Connection. If you do not have login privileges, refer to the CCO home page, www.cisco.com, to obtain a login.
To ensure that your devices have the correct device access, password information, and user information, you can change the device attributes.
To ensure that Contract Connection provides accurate contract status information, you must enter device serial numbers to the inventory entries of devices that have service contracts.
To edit device attributes, including serial numbers, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > Inventory > Change Device Attributes. The Change Device Attributes dialog box appears.
Step 2 Select the device whose device information you want to edit, then click Next.
Step 3 To change the serial numbers, select Device Serial Numbers, then click Next. The Edit Device Serial Numbers dialog box appears.
Step 4 Enter the device name and serial number, then click Next.
Now that you have set up Inventory, you can perform some optional tasks to prepare your Essentials environment to perform inventory management tasks. Refer to the online help for information about the following tasks:
To verify that Availability is working correctly, you must have a test device view with at least two devices. You can use the device view that you created during Inventory setup, assuming that you added at least two devices to it. Use this test device view to verify that Availability displays the devices in the view in the Reachability Dashboard.
To verify Availability using the test device view that you created, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > Availability > Change Polling Options.
Step 2 Select the test device view that you created in the All Views list, then click Add to add it to the Polled Views list.
This creates a view for Availability polling.
Step 3 Click Next. The Change Polling Options dialog box appears.
Step 4 Select 5 Minutes from the Verify device reachability every drop-down list, then click Finish.
Step 5 Wait for at least 10 minutes to ensure that Availability polls the devices in your test device view.
Step 6 Select Tasks > Availability > Reachability Dashboard. The Reachability Dashboard appears.
The devices in your test device view should appear in the Reachability Dashboard.
Now that you have configured one Availability view and specified polling parameters, you can monitor devices and run various reports. For details about using Availability, refer to Getting Started with Resource Manager Essentials and the online help.
Syslog Analysis lets you centrally log and track messages generated by devices. You can use the logged error message data to analyze router and network performance. You can customize Syslog Analysis to produce the information and message reports that are important to your operation.
Because system message logging is not part of the Windows NT operating system, Essentials provides Syslog message logging as a Windows NT service (Essentials syslog service). The Syslog service saves each system message to the default directory, C:\Programs Files\CSCOpx. Syslog Analysis then reads the syslog.log file in the default directory for messages, processes the messages, and writes them to the Essentials database. CGI scripts use the database information to generate system message reports. See the online help for more information about using Syslog Analysis.
The following sections describe how to set up Syslog Analysis.
Before you can use Syslog Analysis, you must configure the routers (IOS devices) and switches (Catalyst 5000 series devices) to forward messages to Essentials or a system on which you have installed the distributed Syslog Analyzer collector. For more information about setting up routers for message logging, refer to the online help, the Cisco IOS Software Documentation on CCO (for IOS devices), and the appropriate Catalyst 5000 series reference guides (for Catalyst 5000 series devices).
To configure Cisco IOS devices for Syslog, follow these steps:
Step 1 Telnet to the device and log in. The prompt changes to host>.
Step 2 Enter enable and the enable password. The prompt changes to host#.
Step 3 Enter configure terminal. You are now in configuration mode, and the prompt changes to host(config)#.
Step 4 To make sure logging is enabled, enter logging on.
Step 5 To specify the Essentials server that is to receive the router syslog messages, enter logging 123.45.67.89 (where 123.45.67.89 is the IP address of the server).
Step 6 To limit the types of messages that can be logged to the Essentials server, set the appropriate logging trap level by entering logging trap informational.
Informational signifies severity level 6, which means all messages from levels 0-5 (from emergencies to notifications) will be logged to the Essentials server.
Step 7 Verify that Syslog is running.
(a) From the Essentials interface, select System Admin > Process Status. The Process Status dialog box appears.
(b) Verify that the entry for Syslog Analyzer has the status Running.
To configure Catalyst devices for Syslog, follow these steps
Step 1 Telnet to the device and log in. The prompt changes to host>.
Step 2 Enter enable and the enable password. The prompt changes to host(enable).
Step 3 Enter set logging server enable to make sure logging is enabled.
Step 4 Enter set logging server 123.45.67.89 (where 123.45.67.89 is the IP address of the server) to specify the Essentials server that is to receive the router syslog messages.
Step 5 Set the appropriate logging trap level by entering set logging level informational to limit the types of messages that can be logged to the Essentials server.
Informational signifies severity level 6, which means all messages from level 0-5 (from emergencies to notifications) will be logged to the Essentials server.
Step 6 Verify that the syslog filter file settings are correct and that Syslog is running.
To verify that syslog messages from the network are being processed by Syslog Analyzer, follow these steps:
Step 1 Log in to a managed router that is configured to send Syslog messages to the Essentials server with appropriate login privileges to make configuration changes.
Step 2 Make a nondestructive change to the router configuration. For example, change the contents of the login banner by entering the following commands:
# enable # configure terminal
The prompt changes to #>.
#> banner motd / This is a test / #> end
Step 3 Wait approximately two minutes for the Syslog message generated by the router configuration change to be processed by the server.
Step 4 From Essentials, select Tasks > Syslog Analysis > Standard Reports. The Standard Reports dialog box appears.
Step 5 Select the device for which you made a change. Click Help if needed.
Step 6 Click Next. The Select Dates and Report Type dialog box appears.
Step 7 Select the following:
Step 8 Click Finish. The Syslog-Standard report appears.
Verify that the report contains the Syslog message generated by the configuration change that you made.
Before the configuration archive can gather device configurations, you need to update the Essentials database with passwords and modify device configurations.
Before the configuration archive can gather device configurations, you need to specify the Read and Write community strings, Telnet and Enable passwords, and TACACS, Local, and RCP information for the devices. If you already added or imported devices and did not specify this information, you can change the device attributes. Refer to the Inventory online help or Getting Started with Resource Manager Essentials for more information.
Enter the following information for all devices:
You need to modify your device configurations to enable the configuration archive to gather the configurations by performing the following steps:
Step 1 Make sure the devices are RCP-enabled by entering the following commands in the device configurations:
# ip rcmd rcp-enable # ip rcmd remote-host remote_username 123.45.678.90 local_username enable
where 123.45.678.90 is the IP address of the machine where Essentials is installed. (Alternatively, you can enter the host name instead of the IP address.) The default remote_username and local_username are cwuser.
Step 2 Configure your devices for Syslog Analysis. See the "Setting Up Syslog Analysis" section for more information.
After you have performed these steps on your devices and they become managed, the configuration files are collected and stored in the configuration archive.
Essentials installs two file-transfer servers that are used by the Software Management application:
By default, Essentials uses RCP with devices that support RCP. For devices that do not support RCP, Essentials uses TFTP to transfer files.
You can disable RCP if you do not want Essentials to use RCP with any devices. To do this, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > Software Management > Edit Preferences.
Step 2 Deselect the Use RCP for image transfer (when applicable) check box.
Before you can manage device software images using Software Management, you must add the required device passwords to the device inventory. For additional information about device passwords, refer to the online help.
To add device passwords to the device inventory, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > Inventory > Change Device Attributes. The Change Device Attributes dialog box appears.
Step 2 Select the device whose device information you want to edit, then click Next. The Change dialog box appears.
Step 3 Select the options for the passwords that you want to enter, then click Next. A dialog box appears for each option you select.
Read and write community strings are required and Telnet password is recommended for Software Management.
Step 4 In each dialog box, enter the password required for the device, then click Next.
Software Management uses an SMTP server on your network to deliver reports. The default location for the SMTP server is localhost, meaning that Software Management uses the SMTP server on the Essentials server system.
If you want Software Management to use an SMTP server on a different system, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > System Administration > System Configuration. The System Configuration dialog box appears.
Step 2 Select the SMTP tab.
Step 3 Enter the name of your SMTP server in the Server Name field.
Step 4 Click Apply to apply your changes.
Software Management has many preferences that you can set to control how the application behaves. To set these preferences, follow these steps:
Step 1 Select Admin > Software Management > Edit Preferences. The Edit Preferences dialog box appears.
Step 2 Change the preferences settings as appropriate.
For more information about Software Management preferences settings, refer to the online help.
Step 3 After you finish, do one of the following:
You must have login privileges to CCO to use several features of Essentials, including Software Management. If you do not have login privileges, refer to the CCO home page, www.cisco.com, to obtain a login.
Now that you have set up Software Management, you can perform some optional tasks that will prepare your Essentials environment to perform software management tasks. Refer to the online help for information about the following optional tasks:
Posted: Wed Dec 22 13:04:37 PST 1999
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