User guide

4-2 ExtremeWare EPICenter Software Installation and User Guide
Using the Inventory Manager
can assign it to a specific device group, and configure it using the Inventory Manager,
VLAN Manager, Configuration Manager, Interactive Telnet, ExtremeView, or the optional
Policy Manager. You can receive alarms about faults on the device, and you can view a
hierarchical topology layout of the devices known to the Inventory Manager.
Any EPICenter user can view status information about the network devices currently
knownto EPICenter.Users withAdministrator or Manager access can run Discovery, and
add devices to or delete devices from the list of managed devices in the database. These
users can also explicitly refresh the information in the database related to the devices that
the EPICenter is managing.
Device Groups
Devices in the EPICenter are organized into oneor more device groups.Adevicegroupisa
set of network devices that have something in common, and that can be managed as a
group. For example, devices might be grouped by physical location (Building 1, Building
2, first floor, second floor) or by functional grouping (engineering, marketing, finance) or
by any other criteria that makes sense within the managed network environment.
An individual device must belong to one,and onlyone, device group. All devices become
membersofa devicegroupwhentheyareaddedtotheEPICenterdatabase,eitherthrough
Add Devices or as a part of the Discovery process. By default, devices are added to the
device group “Default,” if you do not specify otherwise. A device may then be moved to
another device group as appropriate.
Gathering Device Status Information
The EPICenter retrieves information about the devices it manages in several ways:
• EPICenter uses SNMP polling for the IP addresses specified in a Discovery request to
retrieve the status information needed by the various EPICenter applets.
• When a switch is added manually to the EPICenter database, EPICenter usesSNMP to
retrieve status information needed by the various EPICenter applets.
• Extreme switches send SmartTraps to EPICenter whenever a change occurs in aswitch
statusvariable in which the EPICenter hasregistered interest. These includechanges to
operating variablesas wellas configuration changes made through othermanagement
entities such as the switch command line interface or ExtremeWare Vista.
These traps are based on a set of SmartTraps rules that the Inventory Manager creates
on the switch when it is added to the switch inventory. The rules tell the switch what
events or changes EPICenter wants to be notified about. The rules are created on the