Table Of Contents

Synchronizing Device Information Between the ANI Server and Resource Manager Essentials

What You Need—Prerequisites

How to Do It—Procedure

Discover Your Network

Verify Devices and Credentials

Export Discovered Devices and Credentials to Essentials

Validate Essentials Credentials

Import Device Credentials to the ANI Server Database

Where You Should End Up—Verification

Synchronizing Device Information Between the ANI Server and Resource Manager Essentials

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As the network administrator, you use Campus Manager and Resource Manager Essentials (Essentials) to manage your company's network. You can synchronize the information from the ANI Server database and the Essentials database to maintain a consolidated list of discovered, entered, and imported network devices. You can also ensure that device changes are propagated to other applications.

The ANI database contains all reachable devices that the ANI Server discovers. However, the Essentials database can contain entries only for managed devices. Therefore, any device that is reachable, but not managed, will not be exported from the ANI Server database to the Essentials database.

This scenario focuses on exporting data from the ANI Server database to the Essentials database. It also focuses on importing data from the Essential database to the ANI Server database.

To do this, refer to these sections:

•What You Need—Prerequisites

•How to Do It—Procedure

•Where You Should End Up—Verification

What You Need—Prerequisites

In this scenario, you will use these applications:

•Resource Manager Essentials Inventory

•Topology Services

•CiscoWorks desktop

How to Do It—Procedure

Use these procedures to synchronize information between the ANI Server database and the Essentials database:

1. Discover Your Network

2. Verify Devices and Credentials

3. Export Discovered Devices and Credentials to Essentials

4. Validate Essentials Credentials

5. Import Device Credentials to the ANI Server Database

Discover Your Network

To discover your network:

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Step 1 Set up ANI Server discovery on the CiscoWorks Server. From the CiscoWorks desktop, select Server Configuration > Setup > ANI Server Admin.

Step 2 From the CiscoWorks desktop, select Campus Manager > Topology Services.

Before continuing with the procedure, you must wait until the discovery process is complete. The discovery process is complete when the Discovery Status shows Idle in the status bar.

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Verify Devices and Credentials

Device synchronization exports only reachable, managed devices from the ANI Server database. This means that you should verify that all of the devices that you want exported are reachable and managed.

Since exported device credentials from the ANI Server database to the Essentials database overwrite any credentials that differ, incorrect SNMP community strings exported from the ANI Server database might overwrite the correct community strings in the Essentials database.

Export Discovered Devices and Credentials to Essentials

The ANI Server automatically discovers devices in the network and stores this information in the ANI Server database. You can export device and credential information to the Essentials database either automatically as new devices are discovered or on a specific schedule.

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Step 1 From the CiscoWorks desktop, select Server Configuration > Setup > ANI Server Admin > Device Synchronization.

Step 2 Select the Synchronize to Essentials tab.

Step 3 Enter the correct information in the Essentials Server Host Name and Port fields.

Step 4 Enter the correct information in the Essentials Server Essentials Admin user ID and Password fields if they differ from the user ID or password of the current CiscoWorks user.

Step 5 Click Send devices to Essentials.

The Send device credentials to Essentials check box is automatically selected, and bulk synchronization is automatically enabled.

Step 6 Select one of these methods to synchronize your data:

•Bulk synchronization—a schedule of times at which to export devices. The default is every day at 1:17 a.m.

•Incremental synchronization—automatically exports reachable, managed devices as the ANI Server discovers them.

Step 7 Click Apply to apply the changes.

Step 8 To export the devices immediately, click Run.

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Validate Essentials Credentials

Importing device credentials into the ANI Server database overwrites any credentials that differ between the Essentials database and the ANI Server database. Therefore, you may lose the correct credential information if you synchronize from an incorrect credential and overwrite the correct one.

To make sure you have the correct credentials in Essentials, you can check the device attributes. To do this validate the credentials in Essentials before you send them. See the Essentials online help for information on checking device attributes.

Import Device Credentials to the ANI Server Database

If you change managed device credentials using an Essentials application, you can import those changes to the ANI Server database.

If the ANI Server database does not have the correct device credentials, device discovery will fail. You can send this information to the ANI Server database automatically as device credentials are changed or on a specific schedule.

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Step 1 From the CiscoWorks desktop, select Server Configuration > Setup > ANI Server Admin  > Device Synchronization.

Step 2 Select the Synchronize from Essentials tab.

Step 3 Enter the correct information in the Essentials Server Host Name and Port fields.

If the user ID or password for the Essentials server is different from that of the user currently logged in to the local CiscoWorks Server, enter the correct information in the Essentials Server Admin User ID and Password fields.

Step 4 Click Receive device credentials from Essentials.

Bulk synchronization is automatically enabled.

Step 5 Choose at least one way to synchronize your data:

•Bulk synchronization—a schedule of times at which to import device credentials. The default is every day at 2:17 a.m.

•Incremental synchronization—automatically receive updates from Essentials when device credentials are changed.

Step 6 Click Apply to apply the changes.

Step 7 To import the credentials right now, click Run.

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Where You Should End Up—Verification

You can determine if the device synchronization completed and the number of devices exported by accessing the status log.

To check the log:

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Step 1 From the CiscoWorks desktop, select Server Configuration > Setup > ANI Server Admin > Device Synchronization.

Step 2 Select the Status Log tab.

Step 3 Enter the information as described in Table 11-1.

Step 4 Click Apply to apply the changes.

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Table 11-1 Status Log Window Fields

Field	Description
File Name	A name for the status log. The file is located in $NMSROOT/etc/cwsi, where $NMSROOT is the root install directory.
Maximum Number of Logged Messages	The maximum number of logged messages that the ANI Server will retain. For every instance of devices or credentials being transferred, a time stamp is applied. When the number of logged messages reaches the maximum, the new messages are logged to a new file and the log contents are moved to _backup.
Log Details	Displays details about the requests sent between the ANI Server and Essentials.
Reload	Displays the current log file.

If you have multiple ANI Servers on your network, you can have all of them automatically export discovered devices to a consolidated listing in Essentials.