Managed And Unmanaged Devices - Extreme Networks ISM Provision User Manual

Managed and Unmanaged Devices

However, commands classed as unsupported can still be managed by ISM Provision.
These commands are added as CLI commands to the device configurations. The
Unsupported Configuration object displays a list of commands that have been added
to the managed device. If you upgrade your devices to a later version of ExtremeWare,
ISM Provision can still track the new features through the Unsupported Configuration
command list.
To add commands to the device configuration, you can use the Telnet or Extreme
WebVista tool within NIM to access the device. See the tasks described in the section,
"Access Extreme Devices Directly", for more information.
Managed and Unmanaged Devices
The Network Provision view displays both managed and unmanaged devices. The
Network Inventory view displays only the managed devices.
Managed devices correspond to actual devices in the network. The configurations of
managed devices are stored on the ISM Provision server and kept in synchronization
with the actual device configurations. If a change is committed to the configuration on
the server, that change is made to the device's configuration. If a change is made to the
device, that change is added to the server when the device communicator next
sychronizes with the device. An unmanaged device will also have its configuration
stored in the ISM Provision server, but will not be synchronized with a network device.
Any changes to the configuration of an unmanaged device remain in the server
database.
To synchronize the device to the server, the ISM Provision server uses a device
communicator to monitor the device. Any changes to the device are added to the server
and any changes to the server are moved to the device. Each managed device is
assigned to a device communicator that is responsible for periodically checking the
device's configuration and updating any changes to the database, and to take
committed changes from the database and implement them on the device.
Unmanaged devices, in contrast, need not actually exist. Unmanaged device
configurations are saved or committed in the ISM Provision server database like
managed devices, but the configuration is never compared with an existing device.
There is no device communicator assigned to the unmanaged device, and the
unmanaged device's configuration, seen in the Network Provision view, is not
synchronized with an actual device.
Network Infrastructure Manager User Guide 4-7