The Alarm System; The Configuration Manager And The Firmware Manager; The Grouping Manager - Extreme Networks EPICenter Guide Manual

EPICenter Overview
organizing devices for management purposes. These utilities are described in the Appendix E
"EPICenter Utilities".
The Inventory Manager displays detailed information about individual devices through a front panel
image that provides a visual device representation, with associated detailed configuration and status
information. Any EPICenter user can view status information about the network devices known to the
EPICenter database. Users with the appropriate access permissions can also view and modify
configuration information for those switches.

The Alarm System

The EPICenter Alarm System provides fault detection and alarm handling for the network devices
monitored by the EPICenter software. This includes Extreme devices and some third-party devices—
those that the EPICenter software can include in its Inventory database. The Alarm System also lets you
define your own alarms that will report errors under conditions you specify, such as repeated
occurrences or exceeding threshold values. You can specify the actions that should be taken when an
alarm occurs, and you can enable and disable individual alarms.
Fault detection is based on SNMP traps, RMON traps, Syslog messages, and some limited polling. The
Alarm System supports SNMP MIB-2 and the Extreme Networks private MIB. You can also configure
alarms based on certain event thresholds, or on the content of Syslog messages. When an alarm occurs
you can specify actions such as sending e-mail, forwarding a trap, running a program, running a script,
or a Telnet macro, sending a page, or sounding an audible alert.

The Configuration Manager and the Firmware Manager

The EPICenter Configuration Manager provides a mechanism and a graphical interface for uploading
and downloading configuration files to and from managed devices. The EPICenter Firmware Manager
can download ExtremeWare software images and BootROM images to Extreme Networks devices, or to
Extreme modules that include software.
The Configuration Manager provides a framework for storing the configuration files, to allow tracking
of multiple versions. Configuration file uploads can be performed on demand, or can be scheduled to
occur at regular times—once a day, once a week, or at whatever interval is appropriate.
The Firmware Manger can be configured to automatically track the firmware versions in Extreme
devices, will indicate whether newer versions are available, and can automatically retrieve those
versions from Extreme if desired.

The Grouping Manager

One of the powerful features of the EPICenter software is its ability to take actions on multiple devices
or resources with a single user action. The Grouping Manager facilitates this by letting you organize
various resources into hierarchical groups, which can then be referenced in other applets. You can then
take actions on a group, rather than having to specify the individual devices or ports that you want to
affect.
You can also create or import named resources such as users and workstations, which can be mapped
through the Grouping Manager to IP addresses and ports. This capability is especially important in
relationship to the optional Policy Manager applet, which takes advantage of these types of resources to
simplify the creation of QoS and Access List policies.
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EPICenter Concepts and Solutions Guide