Extreme Networks EPICenter 4.1, Software Installation Manual

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26 EPICenter Software Installation and User Guide
EPICenter and Policy Manager Overview
The STP Monitor
The EPICenter Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) Monitor module displays information about STP domains
network-wide at the domain, VLAN, device, and port levels. The STP Monitor can monitor STP
domains configured on devices running ExtremeWare 6.2.2 or later. Earlier versions of ExtremeWare
supported the Spanning Tree protocol. STP information via SNMP is available starting with
ExtremeWare version 6.2.2.
Dynamic Reports
EPICenter Reports are HTML pages that can be accessed separately from the main EPICenter user
interface, without logging in to the Java user interface. The Reports module can also be accessed from
the EPICenter Navigation toolbar. A Summary Report is also displayed on the main EPICenter “home”
page that provides basic information on the status of EPICenter devices and alarms. From this report
you can access other more detailed reports.
The EPICenter reports are HTML pages that do not require Java capability, and thus can be accessed
from browsers that do not have the ability to run the full EPICenter user interface. This means reports
can be loaded quickly, even over a dial-up connection, and it also provides the ability to print the
reports.
The Reports capability provides a number of predefined HTML reports that present information from
the EPICenter database. You can also create your own reports by writing Tcl scripts.
Distributed Server Mode
To manage very large numbers of network devices, or devices that are geographically distributed, the
management task can be divided up between multiple EPICenter servers. Each server in the server
group is updated at regular intervals with network summary and status information from the other
servers in the group. From the EPICenter home page, a client attached to any one of the servers in the
server group can view summary status information from the other servers in the group in addition to
the standard Network Summary report. The EPICenter client also lets the user easily navigate between
the different servers in the group to see detailed management information about the devices managed
by those servers.
Security Management
In order to access EPICenter features, a user must log in with a user name and a password.
EPICenter provides three access levels:
• Monitor—users who can view status information only.
• Manager—users who can modify device parameters as well as view status information.
• Administrator—users who can create, modify and delete EPICenter user accounts as well as perform
all the functions of a user with Manager access.
The EPICenter Admin applet enables configuration of EPICenter as a Remote Authentication Dial In
User Service (RADIUS) server. As an alternative, it can be configured as a RADIUS client, or RADIUS
authentication functionality can be disabled.
When EPICenter acts as a RADIUS server, it can be contacted by RADIUS clients (such as Extreme
Networks switches) to configure access permissions for Extreme switches, and to authenticate user
names and passwords. The use of the RADIUS server avoids the need to maintain user names,