Information About Network Servers
During device discovery, DCNM-LAN can discover the host bus adapters (HBAs) and Ethernet network adapters of the network servers that are connected to Cisco NX-OS devices in your network. DCNM-LAN uses the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) to retrieve information about the Ethernet network adapters from network servers; however, the information retrieved by LLDP is not adequate for DCNM-LAN to determine if the discovered network adapters are part of the same network server.
Beginning with DCNM-LAN Release 5.1, you can use DCNM-LAN to discover the servers for the following scenarios:
-
Servers having Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) that are directly connected to Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches.
-
Servers having CNAs that are connected to a Nexus 2000 which is in turn connected to Nexus 5000 Series switch.
-
Servers having CNAs that are directly connected to Nexus 7000 Series switch.
Note Because LLDP is not supported on Nexus 2000 Series switches that are connected to Nexus 7000 Series switches, Cisco DCNM-LAN cannot discover servers having CNAs connected to Nexus 2000 Series switches which are in turn connected to Nexus 7000 Series switches.
You can see the discovered CNA adapters in the Static Server-Adapter Mapping feature pane. DCNM-LAN does not allow you to automatically correlate adapters that are connected to Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches via CNA. However, you can manually correlate the CNA adapters that belong to a network server. For more information about the discovery process, see Chapter1, “Administering Device Discovery”
The Network Servers feature allows you to associate HBAs and Ethernet network adapters that DCNM-LAN discovered with LLDP to servers. The topology map can show the network servers that you define.
Note DCNM-LAN supports discovery and management of VMware ESX servers (including the virtual machines that are hosted on the ESX servers), Linux servers, and Windows 2008 servers only.
The Network Servers feature also allows you to view server connectivity information.
Automatic Correlation of Adapters to Servers
If you provide DCNM-LAN with a valid username and password that it can use to log into a network server, DCNM-LAN can automatically associate the network adapters of a network server, which allows DCNM-LAN to retrieve enough information from the network server to determine which discovered adapters are a part of the same network server. The DCNM-LAN topology view displays a graphical representation of the associations between adapters and servers.
A network server is considered managed if DCNM-LAN can successfully log into the server and retrieve the connectivity information.
To more easily manage your network servers, you can use the DCNM-LAN server correlation feature to set up the login credentials for multiple servers. You can configure multiple servers to use the same credentials or unique credentials for each server.
Manual Correlation of Adapters to Servers
If you cannot provide DCNM-LAN with credentials to log into a network server, you can manually correlate, or bind, adapters to a network server.
Configuring Network Servers
This section includes the following topics:
Configuring Default Server Credentials
You can configure the default server credentials, which DCNM-LAN uses to authenticate itself when it connects to a newly discovered server. DCNM-LAN uses the default server credentials to communicate with each discovered server that you have not configured with unique server credentials.
Note Server credentials are unique for each DCNM-LAN user.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Determine what the default server credentials should be. All servers that DCNM-LAN uses the default server credentials to communicate with must have a user account configured with a username and password that are identical to the default server credentials that you configure in DCNM-LAN.
Note We recommend that you use a strong password. Common guidelines for strong passwords include a minimum password length of eight characters and at least one letter, one number, and one symbol. For example, the password Re1Ax@h0m3 has ten characters and contains uppercase and lowercase letters in addition to one symbol and three numbers.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Server Credentials
.
The Server Credentials area appears in the Contents pane, above the Servers area, which lists the discovered servers.
Step 2 In the User Name field, enter the username for the default server credentials. A valid username can be 1 to 32 characters. Valid characters are numbers, symbols, and case-sensitive letters.
Step 3 To the right of the Password field, click the down-arrow button.
Step 4 In the Password field and the Confirm Password field, enter the password for the default credentials. Valid passwords are numbers, symbols, and case-sensitive letters.
Step 5 Click
OK
.
Step 6 From the menu bar, choose
File > Deploy
to save the default credentials.
Clearing Default Server Credentials
You can clear the default server credentials.
Note If you clear the default server credentials, DCNM-LAN can connect to discovered servers only if you have configured unique credentials for each managed server.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
If you intend to use DCNM-LAN without default server credentials, you should ensure that DCNM-LAN is configured with unique server credentials for each discovered server before you perform this procedure.
For more information, see the “Configuring Unique Credentials for a Server” section.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Server Credentials
.
The Server Credentials area appears in the Contents pane, above the Servers area, which lists the discovered servers.
Step 2 In the Default Credentials area, click
Clear
.
The User Name field and the Password field clear.
Step 3 From the menu bar, choose
File > Deploy
to save your changes to the DCNM-LAN server.
Configuring Unique Credentials for a Server
You can configure credentials that are unique to a discovered server. When unique credentials exist for a discovered server, DCNM-LAN uses them when it connects to the server rather than using the default server credentials.
Note Server credentials are unique for each DCNM-LAN user.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Determine the username and password for a user account on the discovered server.
Note We recommend that you use a strong password. Common guidelines for strong passwords include a minimum password length of eight characters and at least one letter, one number, and one symbol. For example, the password Re1Ax@h0m3 has ten characters and contains uppercase and lowercase letters in addition to one symbol and three numbers.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Server Credentials
.
The discovered servers appear in the Servers area of the Contents pane.
Step 2 In the User Credentials column for the server, double-click the entry and then click the down-arrow button.
Step 3 In the User Name field, enter the username. Valid usernames are between 1 and 32 characters. Valid characters are numbers, symbols, and case-sensitive letters.
Step 4 In the Password field and the Confirm Password field, enter the password. Valid passwords are numbers, symbols, and case-sensitive letters.
Step 5 Click
OK
.
Step 6 From the menu bar, choose
File > Deploy
to save the server credentials to the DCNM-LAN server.
Clearing Unique Credentials for a Server
You can clear unique credentials for a discovered server.
Note If you clear the unique credentials for a discovered server, DCNM-LAN uses the default credentials to connect to the server.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
If you intend to operate DCNM-LAN without unique credentials for the server, ensure that DCNM-LAN is configured with default server credentials before you perform this procedure.
For more information, see the “Configuring Default Server Credentials” section.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Server Credentials
.
Discovered servers appear in the Servers area of the Contents pane.
Step 2 In the Servers area, click the server that has credentials that you want to clear.
Step 3 From the menu bar, choose
Actions > Clear Credentials
.
A confirmation dialog box appears.
Step 4 Click
Yes
.
Step 5 From the menu bar, choose
File > Deploy
to save your changes to the DCNM-LAN server.
Correlating Servers
Correlating servers helps you manage a range of servers. An operation performed on a range of servers applies the operation to all the servers in that range.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Ensure that the following have been confirmed and set for your appropriate platform.
– Only Windows Server 2003 R2 (5.2.3970 or higher version) is supported.
– WinRM system utility is installed.
(Available from Windows Server installation CD or Microsoft Support site.)
– Telnet service is enabled and running.
– User level privileges are enabled.
– NICs have been identified.
To verify that the NICs have been identified, you can use the
iponfig /all
CLI command.
– HBAs have been identified.
To verify that the HBAs have been identified, you can use the
winrm e wmi/root/wmi/MSFC_FibrePortHBAAttributes
CLI command.
Note Command output may display an error if an HBA is not installed on the server. This is expected. Ignore the error.
– Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, and R2 (6.0.6001 or higher version) is supported.
– WinRM system utility is installed.
– Telnet service is enabled and running.
– User level privileges are enabled.
– NICs have been identified.
To verify that the NICs have been identified, you can use the
iponfig /all
CLI command.
– HBAs have been identified.
To verify that the HBAs have been identified, you can use the
winrm e wmi/root/wmi/MSFC_FibrePortHBAAttributes
CLI command.
Note Command output may display an error if an HBA is not installed on the server. This is expected. Ignore the error.
– RHEL 4.5 is supported.
– SSH is enabled.
– User level privileges are enabled.
– NICs have been identified.
To verify that the NICs have been identified, you can use the
ifconfig -a
CLI command.
– HBAs have been identified.
To verify that Qlogic HBAs have been identified, you can use the
grep adapter-port /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/*
CLI command.
To verify that Emulex HBAs have been identified, you can use the
find /sys/class/scsi_host/ -name port_name
and the
find /sys/class/fc_host/ -name port_name
CLI commands.
View the consolidated information by using ‘cat’ on the resulting files.
– ESX 3.5 or higher version is supported.
– SSH is enabled.
– NICs have been identified.
To verify that the NICs have been identified, you can use the
esxcfg-nics -l
CLI command.
– HBAs have been identified.
To verify that the HBAs have been identified, you can use the
esxcfg-scsidevs -a
CLI command.
– HBAs and CNAs of Qlogic and Emulex have been tested and supported.
Note For a virtual machine, the HBA information is not displayed in the virtual machine. In the virtual machine display, the SAN details are disabled for the virtual machine. The HBA information is displayed in the ESX.
– For Nexus 7000, LLDP is supported from 5.0.
– For Nexus 5000, LLDP is supported from4.2(1)N1(1).
– For Nexus 5000, FC is supported for all versions.
– For MDS, is supported from 3.3(2).
Table 18-1
summarizes the support by platform.
Table 18-1 Summary
|
|
|
|
|
Supported NIC
|
All
|
All
|
All
|
All
|
Supported HBA
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Supported CNA
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Qlogic, Emulex
|
Operating System
|
R2 (All editions)
32 bit and 64 bit
|
All editions
32 bit and 64 bit
|
RHEL 4.5
|
ESX 3.5
|
Required service
|
Telnet/ssh
WinRM
|
Telnet/ssh
WinRM
|
SSH/Telnet
|
SSH/Telnet
|
Authority
|
User level privileges
|
User level privileges
|
User level privileges
|
User level privileges
|
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Server Credentials
.
The discovered servers appear in the Servers area of the Contents pane.
Step 2 In the Servers pane, right-click to access the context menu.
Step 3 Choose
New Server
in the context menu.
A new row for the server is displayed.
Step 4 In the IP Address field, enter the IP addresses of the range of servers.
IP address are delimited with commas or hyphens.
After the IP addresses are entered, the system validates the addresses. A red colored border indicates an error condition. A yellow colored border indicates a valid entry.
Step 5 Double-click the
User Credentials
field to access the Set User Credentials dialog box.
Step 6 In the User Name field, enter the username. Valid usernames are between 1 and 32 characters. Valid characters are numbers, symbols, and case-sensitive letters.
Step 7 In the Password field and the Confirm Password field, enter the password. Valid passwords are numbers, symbols, and case-sensitive letters.
Step 8 Click
OK
.
Step 9 From the menu bar, choose
File > Deploy
to save the settings to the DCNM-LAN server.
Step 10 To start server correlation, right-click the row or a single server in the range to access the context menu.
Step 11 Choose
Correlate
in the context menu.
The operation changes the status of each server to Discovering. When the operation completes, the adapters are bound to the servers. If the operation fails, the status of the server becomes Unreachable and is accompanied with a message.
Correlating a Server to Adapters Automatically
DCNM-LAN can log into servers that run a Linux operating system and use the network connectivity information that it retrieves to correlate HBA network adapters that it has detected to the Linux server.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
You must configure valid server credentials for the server that you want DCNM-LAN to correlate with HBA adapters automatically. You can configure credentials unique to the server, or if the credentials are valid with other servers, too, you can configure default server credentials.
Note If the server credentials are unavailable, you can bind the adapter to a server manually. For more information, see the “Binding Adapters to a Server Manually” section.
DCNM-LAN must have discovered one or more HBA network adapters and one network server.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Servers
.
Discovered servers appear in the Servers area of the Summary pane.
Step 2 Under the Server column, click the server that you want to correlate with adapters automatically.
Tip If you want to correlate more than one server at a time, press and hold Ctrl and then click each server that you want to correlate with adapters.
Step 3 Right-click on the selected server(s) and choose
Correlate Server(s)
.
DCNM-LAN begins discovering network connectivity information from the selected server(s).
After discovery completes, the Connected Switches column shows any additional connections correlated to the server. The local topology shown to the right of the selected server is also updated to show any connections correlated with the server.
Binding Adapters to a Server Manually
DCNM-LAN allows you to associate HBA network adapters that it has detected to a discovered server. This process does not depend upon DCNM-LAN being able to log into the server and retrieve information from it.
The connection between a managed device and the server can be displayed on the topology map after you have successfully bound the adapter to a server.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
DCNM-LAN must have discovered one or more HBA network adapters.
DCNM-LAN must be able to reach the server to which you want to bind the adapter, either by IP address or DNS name.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Static Server-Adapter Mapping
.
The Contents pane lists discovered HBA network adapters.
Step 2 Press and hold the
Ctrl
key and then click each adapter that you want to bind to a server.
Step 3 Right-click on any selected adapter and choose
Bind to Server
.
The Enter Server Name dialog box appears
Step 4 In the Server Name field, enter the IP address or DNS name of the server, and then click
OK
.
Step 5 From the menu bar, choose
File > Deploy
to save your changes to the DCNM-LAN server.
In the topology map, the connection between the adapter and the managed device is available for viewing when you choose to view the connections to end devices for the managed device.
Unbinding an Adapter from a Server
You can remove a server-adapter binding that you have created. This process does not depend upon DCNM-LAN being able to log into the server and retrieve information from it.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
The server-adapter binding that you want to remove must exist in DCNM-LAN.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose
Network Servers > Static Server-Adapter Mapping
.
The Contents pane lists discovered HBA network adapters.
Step 2 Under the Server Port column, click the adapter that you want to unbind.
Step 3 Right-click the adapter and choose
Unbind from Server
.
The Server Name field for the selected adapter clears.
Step 4 From the menu bar, choose
File > Deploy
to save your changes to the DCNM-LAN server.
In the topology map, the connection between the adapter and the managed device is no longer available for viewing.
Viewing and Searching Network Servers
You can view and search the network servers that are connected to the Cisco NX-OS devices from the Cisco DCNM-LAN Client.
Note The DCNM-LAN Client tracks only directly connected hosts to the discovered switches.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the Feature Selector pane, choose Network Server > End Hosts.
The End Hosts summary appears in the Contents pane.
The End Hosts summary displays the details of the network servers that are connected to the Cisco NX-OS devices.
The information about the End Hosts is listed below.
|
|
|
Server Name
|
Name of the server.
|
Read
|
VM Name
|
VM name of the server.
|
Read
|
MAC Address
|
MAC address of the server port.
|
Read
|
Server IP Address
|
IP address of the server.
|
Read
|
Switch Port
|
Port details.
|
Read
|
VLAN ID
|
VLAN ID.
|
Read
|
Switch Name
|
Name of the switch.
|
Read
|
Last Seen Time
|
Displays the last seen time of the servers MAC address in the switch.
|
Read
|
The Total Number Server Adapters label displays the number of servers available in network.
Select the Enable End Hosts Discovery checkbox and click the deploy buttin to enable end hosts discovery. By default, the end host discovery is disabled. When you select enable end hosts discovery, end host discovery is executed every three hours for the following Cisco Nexus devices supported by Cisco DCNM:
-
Cisco Nexus 7000
-
Cisco Nexus 5000
-
Cisco Nexus 5500
The Current Page/Total Number of Pages label displays the current page and total count of pages.
Step 2 From the Switch Port column, click on a port to navigate to the Ports panel and configure the port.
Step 3 (Optional) Click the first, previous, next, or the last button
to navigate through the pages.
Step 4 (Optional) Enter the page number that you want to view in the Go to Page
field.
Step 5 (Optional) Click the Excel
icon to export the data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. You can chose to export either all server details or only the visible rows. When you see the prompt Do you want to export the all the servers?, click No to export only visible rows.
Step 6 (Optional) In the Filter By drop-down list, select the MAC address, Switch IP address, connected switch IP address, or VLAN ID and then click the magnifying glass to search the network server.
Step 7 (Optional) Select inactive hosts since from the drop-down list and provide the required date. All the inactive hosts from the date entered to the current date will be displayed.
Note Once you filter the inactive servers, any of the inactive servers that becomes active in the switch will be removed from the filtered list. You can use the delete button to delete inactive servers.
Step 8 (Optional) You can change the polling interval by performing the following steps:
a. Under<USER_INSTALL_DIR>\dcm\ dcnm\data\hosttracking, locate the hosttracking.properties file. In the hosttracking.properties file, under the host_discovery_polling_interval_in_minutes field, enter the polling interval (in minutes).
Note If Cisco DCNM is installed in VSB, by default, the hosttracking.properties file is located under /root/CSCOdcnm/data_archive/data/hosttracking.
For example, HOST_DISCOVERY_POLLING_INTERVAL_IN_MINUTES=180
b. For the new polling interval to be in effect, in the End Hosts Discovery screen, disable end hosts discovery and enable end hosts discovery again with the new polling interval.
After you apply the filters in the End Hosts summary, any addition and deletion of network servers within the network are not displayed in the filtered list. To see those changes, you must either remove the filter and reapply or refresh the window.
If the filtered result size exceeds the maximum number of sever rows per page, a dialog box appears warning you to change the filter criteria so that the number of rows is less than the maximum number of rows allowed per page.
Troubleshooting Host Tracking
By using the Cisco DCNM Web Client, you must discover the virtual servers that run VMware before discovering Cisco Nexus devices to which the virtual servers are connected.
You can discover a server by using the Cisco DCNM Web Client.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the main menu bar, Admin > Data Sources > VMware.
You can discover a Cisco Nexus device by using the Cisco DCNM Web Client.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 From the main menu bar, Admin > Data Sources > LAN.
If a switch port that is connected to the server is down, the Cisco DCNM server removes that server entry from End Host page. If a switch port that is connected to the server is up, the DCNM server automatically detects the port and then triggers the server discovery and populates the MAC address table.
The switch MAC address table does not have any host MAC addresses in the following scenarios:
-
There is no traffic flowing.
-
The port connected to the server is down.
To track the hosts connected to the Switch, use the show mac address-table command.