Devices Navigation
This section explains what a user may see in the Unified Assurance software when using the Devices navigation pane in the main user interface, which also gives users quick access to a variety of device-specific information.
What is a Device?
A device is a generic term describing something that the software will interact with. These are usually devices that are on the network, and are used to store metric/topology data, as well as be a reference for events. All engines within Unified Assurance leverage the Device Catalog to provide out-of-the-box centralized device management.
Device Groups can be used to group individual devices for management, polling and display purposes within the software. A device can belong to multiple device groups.
How to Create a Device
Devices are populated into the Device Catalog using one of these methods:
-
Automated discovery processes using discovery profiles and applications.
-
Additional information is available in the Discovering Devices guide, which has additional information regarding Devices, Device Groups, Device Zones, and more.
-
Manual entry of device information.
Devices Navigation Explained
When the Devices navigation pane is displayed, the users will see the Device Group that has been assigned as the user groups Restrictive Device Group, along with any Devices that are in the group. The user will also see child Device Groups, and can then see any Devices that are in the child groups. As an example, an organization has this kind of device layout:
-
Root (Device Group)
-
Device Group 1
-
Device Group 3
-
Device E
-
Device F
-
-
Device C
-
-
Device Group 2
- Device D
-
Device A
-
Device B
-
The user will see the following in the navigation pane:
-
If the user group's restrictive device group is set to Root, they will see the entire layout above.
-
If the user group's restrictive device group is set to Device Group 1, they will see Device C as it is a member of Device Group 1. The user will also see Device Group 3, which can be expanded to show Device E and Device F.
Note:
If a restrictive group is not set, the UI will default to using the Root group.
For each device that is listed in the navigation, three icons are also displayed to show the devices quick status:
-
Clicking on a device name will display the device information portal. Clicking on the "+" next to the device name will display some basic device information.
-
The first icon on the right of the device name represents the device's availability within the last hour, and the icon color will change based around the availability. If the availability within the last hour is 100%, a green icon will be shown. If the availability within the last hour is 0%, a red icon will be shown. If the device is not being polled, a purple icon will be shown. If none of the above conditions are true, a yellow icon will be shown. Clicking on the icon will display the availability information for the device. Hovering over the icon will display the base availability for the device.
-
The second icon on the right of the device name represents the device's threshold status, and looks for events with an SubMethod that contains Metric Mgr Syslog. The icon color is based on the logic that is explained below. Clicking on the icon will display a list of all of the metrics for the device. Hovering over the icon will display the count of threshold events that are in the event list.
-
The third icon on the right of the device name represents the device's event status, and looks for events with a SubMethod that does not contain Metric Mgr Syslog. The icon color is based on the logic that is explained below. Clicking on the icon will display all of the events for the device. Hovering over the icon will display the count of non-threshold events that are in the event list.
For the threshold and event icon color, the color will change based on the highest severity event for that device. This means that if a device has two Info events and two Major events, since Major has the higher severity level, the icon color will be that of the Major severity.