Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches

Started by r1993r

Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   06 August 2020, 00:20

This software is awesome! keep up the great work!

Just one suggestion... When discovering a network, it's quite labour intensive to have to either manually add each switch, or edit each switch to config snmp credentials if its been discovered. Would it be possible to simply add the router and configure credentials, and used cdp/lldp to discover connected switches and import them with option to inherit router credentials?

We have some racks on site with a router which may have up to 20 switches connected, and adding them all in manually is time consuming, especially if we have dozens of similar racks.

Have passed this software onto our purchasing team, so hopefully we will be able to make full use of it shortly!
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   06 August 2020, 13:44

Perhaps you could just use the SNMP Device Discovery feature located under Device Manager? It will scan a network range and send SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 probes with the specified community name. This way you can easily discover and import switches. It will find SNMPv3 devices as well, as far as I remember.

SoftPerfect support forum

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   06 August 2020, 17:44

Yes it will, however we then have to individually edit the snmpv3 creds for each device.

Could it therefore not be useful to enter the credentials prior to discovery to negate the need to then have to edit each one, especially useful if we use the same creds across your entire estate. This could then also be used to extract the Hostname from the switch and apply it to the device name.

In the 24hrs I've been trailing this software we have found it more useful than Solarwinds (although that's not very difficult), but all credit to the dev team!
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   06 August 2020, 20:50

That's actually a good idea to allow one to scan for SNMPv3 devices with known credentials. This way you indeed wouldn't need to assign them to each and every entry manually.

We'll do our best to add it tomorrow, though it's more likely to take a couple of days. I will post an update here, please stay tuned.

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   06 August 2020, 23:40

No rush!! ok, yes, thumb up Will be more than happy to test!
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   07 August 2020, 13:55

We have just added SNMPv3 support in SNMP Device Discovery. You can now specify SNMPv3 credentials and these will be automatically assigned to detected devices. The new builds can be downloaded here.

When both a community and SNMPv3 credentials are specified, the software will attempt to connect using the highest version first. That is SNMPv3 will be attempted first, followed by SNMPv2 and SNMPv1.

SoftPerfect support forum

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   08 August 2020, 01:03

Awesome, thanks... I've just emailed you as the addition of the hostname is grabbing lots of other info too.... I think it's showing:

snmplocaiton/hostame/iosversion and other cisco info...

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   08 August 2020, 01:52

Hi again, are you able to consider this please....

The above solution works great and greatly simplifies the discovery process. We use a management subnet on each hub, which would comprise a router and say 6 switches. The discovery imports all of these but doesn't realize one is a router so is unable to determine the IPs of connected device due to it not querying the arp table.

Given that the router has been detected and displayed with all of the switches during the scan, would there be any way to choose it from the list and designate as the router? Maybe a right click on the device "Make Router" or something?

The only workaround for this was to manually add the router using the Add Device then rescan the group again to capture the arp table and display all of the IPs.

It could also be at this point you could create a group name (if you wanted) and put all of these devices within that group automatically.

Obviously I am only basing the above on how we manage our hubs, but it does seem a logical approach.

Sorry to burden you!
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   10 August 2020, 15:28

No worries. That's a good point and I suppose many admins would find it useful.

The new builds present a choice of target group and which device is to be added as a router. Please let me know how it works for you.

SoftPerfect support forum

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   10 August 2020, 23:23

Wow... that's fantastic!

I don't know if you spotted my message above about how the PortID is being displayed (Hostname is bold):

[SITE-1-LBUILDING / HUB-1-SW01.DOMAIN.COM / Cisco IOS Software, C2960X Software (C2960X-UNIVERSALK9-M), Version 15.2(2)E7, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc3)
Technical Support: http ://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 1986-2017 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Wed 12-Jul-17 13:06 by prod_rel_team] 30

Re you update build, the Router also acts as a switch, so this would need to be scanned as part of the group, not just queried for the arp tables/mac db etc.
When you return to the main screen after the device discovery, the group named is sown in the drop down box, but GO isn't available until you then select one of the switches in the group. This does then list all of the switches which can be selected. If the Group was selected and GO was selectable this would negate the extra popup for switch selection which would be shown if you then selected a group member in the drop down. Hope that makes sense!

Have you considered allowing the creation of SNMPv3 Profiles which could be selectable during the discovery? Just thinking of scenarios where you may have different creds. It would also allow you to reselect a profile you have already used without having to re-enter for each discovery (when relaunching). Fortunately for us, we do have a single profile for all, but others may have multiple profiles.

Many thanks for your implementations!
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   11 August 2020, 16:00

Thank you for your feedback. I have a couple of ideas of how we can improve the UI, including letting one choose what fields form the entry name. At the moment the name is made of sysName, sysDescr and sysLocation, which indeed results in way too long names.

I will post an update here soon.

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   11 August 2020, 18:34

Thanks Andrew, happy to help/test where I can!

Hopefully our order should be going through within the next few days, just need to get it signed off as it is not a part of normal procurement procedures.

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   11 August 2020, 22:24

All paid for and licensed up now! smile
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   17 August 2020, 21:58

We have improved the import process in the latest builds. It is now possible to specify which fields will form the device name, so you can omit unneeded data by unticking that column:

SoftPerfect support forum

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   18 August 2020, 18:51

Fantastic, many thanks!

That works much better, my only suggestion would be to perhaps separate the Port ID (which is usually just an index number e.g, 10123) and the actual name of the device (chosen by your selection method above). Essentially a separate column on the main view: Device Name, Port ID.

Had you given any consideration to some of the other points I mentioned; saving/profiling SNMPv3 credentials to save having to re-enter them; and scanning the nominated Router as a switch, as currently I have to go into the group and add the device separately, then rescan the group.

I'm honestly blown away be how powerful both the Mapper and the Scanner are, and also how responsive you are to suggestions and development. I hope I'm not burdening you with additional works and hope my suggestions are benefiting others too! Certainly the last could of suggestions you have implemented make discovery a much quicker and less hands on process.

Thank you!
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   25 August 2020, 15:28

We have relocated switch name into a separate column in the main view. It may first appear as the rightmost column, but you can move it anywhere within the view:

SoftPerfect support forum

We have also re-implemented the router and target group selection, as shown below. This will permit using the same device as both a switch and a router.

SoftPerfect support forum

Regarding SNMPv3 profiles, may be at a later date. It would require significant changes in the application, including adding some sort of a profile manager and converting existing user data.

Once again, thank you for the useful suggestions - the product is definitely getting better with every iteration ok, yes, thumb up

Re: Suggestion: Use seed routers to discover and import connected switches   02 September 2020, 18:06

It certainly is... it has made our job much easier in such a short space of time!

Looking forward to seeing how this develops and hope I can make future useful suggestions!

Cheers

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