Feedback on FindIT Network Agent

[Aaron Wu]

Tried 0809 build. Here're some feedbacks.

• Suggest to add some note on network bridging mode in Admin Guide, essentially help users to understand FNA needs to be in the same VLAN as network devices to discover them. (I think this is needed?)
• Topology or inventory won’t show up in Safari browser. I tried clearing all caches to no avail.
• There should be an easy way to see VLAN membership of the port in the Device View without clicking into Select VLAN (And even in select VLAN, the pre-selected VLANs are not always the current VLAN membership). Also when in Select VLAN, whether the port is in access or trunk mode should be more obvious.
• When creating VLAN in Device View, there is an option of “Create on all switches in device group”. It’ll be helpful to display here which device group(s) the current switch belongs to.
• Will it make sense to show default device credentials in “Credential Management” page, so users don’t need to refer to document to know what’s the default.

Thanks.

[David Harper]

Thanks for the feedback.

• Suggest to add some note on network bridging mode in Admin Guide, essentially help users to understand FNA needs to be in the same VLAN as network devices to discover them. (I think this is needed?)
• Fair enough.  Good suggestion.  I'll add that.
• Topology or inventory won’t show up in Safari browser. I tried clearing all caches to no avail.
• Looks like a bug here.  There is an issue with the websocket that provides the data stream for the discovery and dashboard pages.
• There should be an easy way to see VLAN membership of the port in the Device View without clicking into Select VLAN (And even in select VLAN, the pre-selected VLANs are not always the current VLAN membership). Also when in Select VLAN, whether the port is in access or trunk mode should be more obvious.
• This is mostly fixed in the next beta drop.  When you click on a port in device view, the native VLAN and any trunking VLANs are listed in the basic info panel that appears.  In select VLAN, we switch between access and trunk mode automatically based on your VLAN selection.
• When creating VLAN in Device View, there is an option of “Create on all switches in device group”. It’ll be helpful to display here which device group(s) the current switch belongs to.
• Good suggestion.  We can do this.
• Will it make sense to show default device credentials in “Credential Management” page, so users don’t need to refer to document to know what’s the default.
• Actually, FindIT will try the default credentials automatically, so you should never need to enter them in this page.  Anything using default credentials should already be listed in the tables and being good to go.

Cheers,

Dave.

[chucui]

• Topology or inventory won’t show up in Safari browser. I tried clearing all caches to no avail.

On this, it mayn't be a bug, Safari is every special, it requires you to add self-signed certificate into MacOX keychain permanently when you open the probe URL for the first time, otherwise, it can't establish websocket connection correctly later on, we have a S4 bug to track this issue to try to add more tips on GUI to notify user, but there is a technical issue on how to detect this situation.

Thanks,
Brian

[Aaron Wu]

Thanks, David and Brian.

For Safari certificate issue, we may want to mention in Admin Guide or Release Note, if not on the GUI.

For access / trunk mode, I get it that it's implicit, but it makes sense to make it more explicit, because it's an important attribute for switch port that people usually want to find out very quickly.

Thanks!

[chucui]

Yes, Aaron, we actually already displayed access/trunk info in port info panel directly, you don't need to click "select vlan" to view them now in latest build.

Thanks, Brian

[David Harper]

Maybe we just display a message in the UI that appears when the browser is safari and the agent has a self-signed certificate installed.  We could also include a FAQ in the documentation about the issue.

It's a tricky one, since as far as I can tell from some googling around, there is nothing we can do on the server side to solve the problem - other than using a trusted certificate.

Cheers,

Dave.