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Device Profiles

Understanding Device Profiles

To enable IP/MPLSView to connect to and collect data from devices in your network, you must configure one or more device profiles. A device profile is a list of devices (typically routers and switches) that specifies connection attributes including the device type, login credentials, and IP addresses. You can define multiple device profiles, each containing as many devices as needed for your topology.

To access the Device Profiles window, select Tools > Device Profiles from the IP/MPLSView main menu. From the Device Profiles window, you can perform the following tasks:

Create device entries and profiles.
Modify device entries and profiles.
Delete device entries and profiles.
Verify connectivity for one or more devices in a device profile.

Note: To import a device profile into IP/MPLSView from an external source such as a configuration file, you must access and use the Device Profile window from the Java client interface. For information.

Creating a New Device Profile

To create a new device profile:

Select Tools > Device Profiles.
The Device Profiles window is displayed. Figure 1 shows the Device Profiles window.
Click the gear icon at the top of the Profile Names pane and select New Profile.
Specify the profile name in the Add New Profile window, and click OK.
The new profile is displayed in the Profile Names pane.

Figure 1: Device Profiles Window

Adding Devices to a Device Profile

To add devices to a device profile:

Select Tools > Device Profiles.
The Device Profiles window is displayed.
Select the name of the device profile you want to populate, and click Add.
The Add New Device window is displayed. (The Add New Device window is identical to the Modify Devices window shown in Figure 2.)
Specify the access parameters and SNMP parameters for the new device, and click Add.
The new device entry is displayed in the Device List pane for the selected profile.

For detailed descriptions of the parameters in the Add New Device window, see Table 1.

Modifying a Device Entry in a Profile

To modify a device entry in a profile:

Select Tools > Device Profiles.
The Device Profiles window is displayed.
Select the name of the device you want to modify, and click Modify.
The Modify Devices window is displayed.
Update the parameters as needed for your device, and click Modify.
For detailed descriptions of the parameters in the Modify Devices window, see Table 1.

Figure 2: Modifying a Device Entry in a Profile

Deleting an Entry in a Device Profile or a Device Profile

To delete a device entry or a device profile:

Select Tools > Device Profiles.
The Device Profiles window is displayed.
Select the profile name (in the Profile Names pane) or device name (in the Device List pane) that you want to delete.
You can select multiple devices by holding down the <CTRL> and <SHIFT> keys while selecting rows.
Click Delete.

Verifying Connectivity for One or More Devices in a Device Profile

To verify connectivity for one or more devices in a device profile:

Select Tools > Device Profiles.
The Device Profiles window is displayed.
In the Device List pane, select the names of one or more devices for which you want to verify connectivity.
Click Test Connectivity.
The Profile Connectivity window is displayed. Figure 3 shows the Profile Connectivity window.

Click Start to begin the connectivity test using the default connectivity testing options.

To stop the test before it completes, click Stop.

Figure 3: Profile Connectivity Window

In the Profile Connectivity window:

Green Checkmark

—

Connectivity passed.

Gray circle

—

Not applicable (for example, if SSH is not specified in the router profile).

Hourglass

—

Processing.

Red circle with white X

—

Connectivity failed (for example, device is not reachable).

(Optional) To override the default connectivity testing options, click Options.
- You can specify a subset of connectivity checks to perform by using the Ping, Telnet SSH, and SNMP protocols.
- If the SNMP connectivity check fails with the SNMP settings given in the device profile, you can rerun the connectivity check with alternate SNMP community strings. In the SNMP tab of the Test Connectivity Options window, click Browse to upload a file containing a list of community strings, one per line. By default, it checks the same SNMP version as in the device profile. Select Check both v1 and v2c versions if you want to check both SNMP version 1 and 2c for these alternative strings. The check goes through each community string one by one, until it finds the correct community string. After the check is done, an opportunity is provided to fix the profile with the correct community string.
To correct errors with the current profile that the software can fix, Profile Fix is enabled. For example, the device hostname may not match the hostname entered into the device profile or the community string may be incorrect but the correct one might be found following the steps mentioned in Populating a Device Profile.
(Optional) Save the results of the connectivity check onto your PC by clicking the Save icon at the lower left. Open the file using Excel.

Populating a Device Profile

Determine how you want to logically group your network devices to facilitate config file organization and information entry. You can put them all in the same device profile or separate them into separate device profiles. Later you can select devices from one or multiple groups for collection purposes.

To use the Autodiscovery option to discover your network from a subset of all the routers, as described in Network Discovery Overview, you only need to include in your device profile the seed routers from which you want IP/MPLSView to start the discovery process. For an OSPF or ISIS network, you can discover an entire area with a seed router based on the OSPF or ISIS database, if router IP addresses are reachable by the management server. If routers can only be reached by management IP addresses, then this method will not work. In a typical out-of-band network, you can use an IP address range to discover the network. For autodiscovery using OSPF, enter one device in each OSPF area in order to collect configurations for all the devices in that area. When you perform the autodiscovery, the software creates a new profile that contains the original devices plus newly discovered devices.

To add entries to your device profile, select the device profile In the left pane of the Device Profiles window to display its contents in the upper right pane. Then, click Add. The Add New Device window with the access parameters is displayed as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Add New Device Access Parameters Window

The access parameters are described in Table 1.

Table 1: Access Parameters in Add New Device Window

Parameter	Description
Device Name	Name of the network device, which should be identical to the hostname. During configuration collection, the software uses this name as part of the name of the collected configuration file. The configuration filename uses the format ip.name.cfg. If the device name is left blank, the configuration filename uses the format ip.cfg.
Device IP	IP address of the network device.
Vendor	Name of the hardware vendor for the device. Possible values include, but are not limited to: Generic, Cisco, Juniper, ERX, Foundry, Riverstone, CRS, and New. If you select Generic as the vendor, the software attempts to guess the vendor by issuing the show version CLI command. For traffic collection purposes, you must specify this field explicitly by choosing a value other than Generic. Note: You can also update the Vendor list by adding a new vendor in the Hardware Vendor/Type Manager, provided that you add the related commands in the /u/wandl/db/command directory. See Editing Show Commands for Data Collection for additional information.
Model	Model number of the network device.
OS	Type of operating system installed on the device.
OS Version	Version number of the operating system build installed on the network device.
Enable Level	Default = 0; Reserved for future use. (Some devices may require a privilege password with a different enable level).
Login / Password	Login ID and password for the network device.
Privilege Login / Privilege Password	Login ID and password for situations that require a higher-security login. Use a login that has the appropriate privileges for the vendor-specific show commands listed in Editing Show Commands for Data Collection.
Timeout	Timeout value for telnet access method. The default value is 300 seconds.
Retry	Number of retries for telnet. The default number of retries is 3.
Access Method	Method used to access the network device. Possible values include: telnet—(Default) Use only telnet access. ssh—Use only ssh access. telnet \| ssh—Try telnet access first, and then try ssh access if telnet access fails. ssh \| telnet—Try ssh access first, and then try telnet access if ssh access fails.
Agent(s)	A space-delimited list of one or more intermediate servers that act as gateways to the device. The servers should either have the same login and password as the device, or there should be another entry in the device profile for the intermediate servers to indicate their login and password information. When scheduling a task to collect data for a device through an intermediate server, you must add the intermediate servers to the list of devices to be collected if the intermediate server and the devices have different login and password information.
Telnet Port	Port number for telnet access. The default telnet port number is 23.
SSH Command	The full path of the command and options used for ssh; for example, /usr/bin/ssh -1 -p 8888
Management IP	The management IP address, which is used first to connect to the device, if available. If this connection fails, the software instead uses the IP address of the device.

Click the SNMP Parameters tab to enter further details for polling the device via SNMP. Some of the fields for SNMP V3 are grayed out by default and can be enabled by selecting V3 In the SNMP Version selection box. The Add New Device and Modify Device windows have the same SNMP parameter fields. Figure 5 shows the SNMP parameters.

Figure 5: Add New Device SNMP Parameters Window

The SNMP parameters are described in Table 2.

Table 2: SNMP Parameters in Add New Device Window

Parameter	Description
SNMP Version	V1, V2, V2C, V3
SNMP Port	Default = 161
SNMP Get	SNMP get community string. The GET community can be optionally encrypted by selecting the encryption icon to the right of this field. Note: After you encrypt this field, it cannot be reversed from the Web interface to show the associated text.
SNMP Set	SNMP set community string; Reserved for future use.
SNMP Timeout	Default = 3 seconds.
SNMP Retry	Default = 3 retries.
V3 User Name	Username.
V3 Context Name	Context name.
V3 Context Engine	Hexadecimal string representing the Context Engine ID.
V3 Authentication	Authentication type. For example, MD5, SHA-1, NONE.
V3 Auth Password	Associated authentication key, used to sign the message.
V3 Privacy	Privacy type, for example, CBC-DES, NONE.
V3 Priv Password	Associated privacy key used to encrypt the message’s data portion.

After completing the SNMP parameters, click Add . Your new entry is displayed in the Device Profiles window. The New Device Profile Entry window remains on the screen, allowing you to quickly create another entry. Modify the necessary fields, including Router Name and IP Address, and click Add when you are finished. When you complete adding all entries to your device profile, click Cancel to close the New Device Profile Entry window.

Updating Device Profiles when Device Passwords are Changed

You must update the corresponding device profiles every time a device password (or SNMP community string) on a device is changed in order to enable successful collection(s) to continue. To do so, select the affected entries in the device profile and perform a multiple modification, as described in Modifying Entries in a Router Profile on page 22.

Tasks using the device profile are updated automatically only if Use Profile Directly was selected. If Use Profile Directly is not selected, the tasks are then created to use a copy of the device profile, and need to be updated when the profile is updated.

Pre-existing device settings in Traffic Collection Manager are not automatically updated by changes to the vice Profiles window, and should be re-done in addition to the Device Profiles window. See Performance Management: Traffic Collection Overview for more details on traffic collection settings.

Test the new device profile as described in Verifying Connectivity for One or More Devices in a Device Profile.

Dual Routing Engine Support

Some devices have more than one routing engine. In this case, only one routing engine is operational at any given point in time. Depending upon which routing engine is active, the hostname and management IP address can be different. In this case, for the traffic collection to recognize that two hostnames belong to the same device, this information may need to be provided as an additional input to IP/MPLSView.

In the case of Juniper master and backup routing engines, if the default routing engine naming conventions are used, beginning or ending with “re0” or “re1”, then no special configuration is needed. For such a device, IP/MPLSView stores the hostname as the part in common between the two routing engines, that is, with the re0 and re1 removed, along with any separating characters adjacent to re0 and re1 (for example, “.”, “_”, or “-”).

For other naming conventions for dual router engines, it is necessary to create a special alias file to indicate which routing engine hostnames belong to the same router. The format of this file is as follows:

Explanation: If this alias file is specified in the Conversion Options of the Scheduling Live Network Collection Task, then the routers in the topology display are displayed with the name <AliasName> if the host name of the collected router matches with either <RoutingEngine0’s Hostname> or <Routing Engine1’s Hostname>. The original hostname can still be seen in the hostname field of the Network > Elements > Nodes view, which can be added as a column to the table via the right-click menu.

In this case, the Router Profile for the device with the dual router engines should contain the AliasName in the Router Name field. The primary IP address can be set to the loopback IP address of the device, assuming that it is the same for both router engines. Alternatively, if there is no common loopback IP address, then the primary and secondary addresses can be set to the master and backup engines’ management IP addresses. In case the primary address fails, then the secondary address is used.

Nodes That are Inaccessible

For nodes that are inaccessible, an IP/MPLSView format config file can be provided. This file should be included in the /u/wandl/data/collection/. LiveNetwork/config directory to be picked up by the Scheduling Live Network Collection task. The format of the file is as follows;

HOSTNAME=<nodeName>

HWTYPE=<hardwareType>

IP=<NodeAddress>

INTERFACE=<interfaceName> IP=<interfaceAddress>

For example, you could configure a device with HWTYPE=CISCO and INTERFACE=Serial1/1.

Syncing to the Master Profile

After scheduling tasks with device profiles, the master profile (/u/wandl/data/.TaskManager/profile/.diag) contains the last valid login for each device that is connected.

To copy settings from a current profile to the master profile:

Select Tools > Device Profiles.
The Device Profiles window is displayed.
Select the profile name that you want to copy settings from the current profile to the master profile (.diag) and click Sync to Master Profile.