Emerson Avocent Data Center Planner User Guide

DATA CENTER PLANNER

INSTALLER/USER GUIDE

Data Center Planner

Installer/User Guide

Emerson, Emerson Network Power and the E merson Network Power logo are trademarks or service marks of Emerson Electric Co. Avocent, the

Avocent logo and DSView are trademarks or service mar ks of Avocent Corporation. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. This

document may contain confidential and/or proprietary information of Avocent Corporation, and its receipt or possession does not convey any right to

reproduce, disclose its contents, or to manufacture or sell anything that it may describe. Reproduction, disclosure, or use without specific authorization

NOTE: This document supports versionsup to and including 4.0 Service Pack 7 (SP7).

590-764-501P

T A B LE  OF  C O N T EN T S

Product Overview 1

Features and Benefits 1

Attributes 1

Visualization capabilities 2

Layout design capabilities 3

Software Requirements 5

Getting Started 5

Server 5

Client 5

Browsers 5

Network connection 6

Other software 6

Supported database types 6

Supported languages 6

Configuration assumptions 6

Minimum system recommendations 7

Hardware considerations 7

Tuning considerations 7

Installation 11

Installing Data Center Planner 11

Installing Data Center Planner on a server with limited or no Internet connection 12

Logging into Data Center Planner 12

Migrating to a New Version of Data Center Planner 13

Uninstalling Data Center Planner 14

User Management 17

Managing Users 17

Authentication 17

External Authentication 17

Users 17

Permissions 17

Creating Users 18

Changing a password 19

Roles 20

Licenses 23

Rack Licensing 23

ii Data Center Planner Installer/User Guide

License enforcement 23

License activation 23

License return 24

License repair 24

License details 24

Proxy settings 24

Integration with other Emerson Network Power Products 27

Supported Products 27

DSView™ management software 27

Rack Power Manager 27

Liebert SiteScan™ web software 27

Integrating with Data Center Planner 27

DSView software integration 27

Rack Power Manager integration 28

Liebert SiteScan™ Web integration 29

Importing Certificates 29

Collection Management 31

Collection Access Control 31

Creating Collections 32

Database Information 35

Connecting to an Existing PostgreSQL Database 35

PostgreSQL 8.2 Database Backup 37

Backing up the PostgreSQL database with pg_dump 37

PostgreSQL 8.4.2 Database Backup 39

Backing up the PostgreSQL database with pg_dump 39

Restoring the database with psql 40

Microsoft® SQL Server Backup 41

Connect to an Existing Microsoft Server Database 41

Moving from PostgreSQL to Microsoft SQL 42

Functional Components 45

Data Center Planner Console 45

Navigating within the console 46

Navigating within panes 46

Tab view navigation 46

Main Menu 46

Help 48

Toolbar 48

Table of Contents iii

Perimeter walls 49

Interior walls 50

Annotations 51

Doors and windows 52

Shapes - ovals and rectangles 52

Buttons 53

Context menus 55

Modes 55

Keyboard Shortcuts 55

Pan and Zoom 56

Floor Tile Grid 56

Operations and Status Bar 56

Multiple Users 57

Preferences 57

Preferences - units 57

Preferences - user-defined properties 58

Export and Import Features 61

Exporting Asset Data 61

Exporting asset data to a .pdf file 61

Exporting Connection Data 62

Exporting Floor Plan Data 63

Exporting floor plan data to .xls spreadsheet 63

Exporting floor plan data to .png format 63

Exporting Rack Data 63

Exporting rack data to a .pdf file 64

Importing a Floor Plan 65

Importing and Exporting Sheets and Column Values 66

Importing and Exporting Templates 68

Importing Assets with No Containment 69

Importing User-Defined Properties 70

Downloading and Importing Symbols 71

Global View 73

Global view capacities and properties 74

Plan View 74

Adding a rack to a plan 75

Aligning assets on a plan 77

Rotating a rack on a plan 78

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Position and angle of racks on a plan 78

Colorization capacities and metrics 78

Consumption 80

Space and network computation 81

Copying a plan or using Save As 81

Creating a new plan 81

Opening an existing plan 83

Cutting, copying and pasting assets on a plan 83

Deleting a plan 83

Multiple asset properties in plan view 84

Plan colorization 84

Rack View 84

Adding assets to a rack 86

Adding assets to racks with different configurations 86

Asset properties in a rack 87

Placing two assets in the same RU position 87

Device placeholders 88

Rack order in rack view 89

Rack timeline 90

Shelf space in a rack 91

Viewing multiple racks 92

Rotating an asset 92

Zero U space in a rack 93

Asset View 94

Configuring a single asset 94

Deleting an asset in asset view 95

Connection View 95

Connections list 96

Creating a Connection 97

Connections table 98

Managing Panes 101

Moving Panes from one Sidebar to the other 101

Removing Panes from the Sidebars 101

Restoring Panes to the Sidebars 101

Moving Panes to a Floating Dialog 102

Properties 102

DSView Software Managed Assets 103

Derate 104

Table of Contents v

Real world power 105

Real world power scheduler 106

Capacities 107

Plan capacities 107

Rack capacities 108

Capacity search 109

Capacity search in plan view 109

Capacity search in rack view 110

Device Library 110

Device properties 111

Device search 113

Requesting, downloading and importing device symbols 113

Inventory 115

Placed assets 115

Unplaced assets 117

Templates 118

Creating a template 118

Adding a template 119

Deleting a template 119

Planning 121

Projects 121

Calendar 121

Project Properties 121

History 121

Current State 122

Project Properties 122

Exporting project properties to .pdf file 122

Creating a new project 123

Editing a project 124

Deleting a project 124

History 124

Project Calendar 125

Project calendar features 125

Project Status 126

Soft conflicts 126

Hard conflicts 126

Conflict revalidation 127

Project Tags 128

vi Data Center Planner Installer/User Guide

Project tag search 128

Project Tasks 128

Committing tasks 130

Deleting tasks 131

Reservations 131

Reservation properties 131

Zero U and shelf space reservations 131

Reservation colorization 132

Visualization of reservation removes 132

Reservation roll-up 132

Cumulative reservations 132

Manager reservation override 132

Appendices 135

Appendix A: Best Practices 135

Appendix B: Changing Configured Database Password 136

Appendix C: External Authentication and Authorization 137

Appendix D: Importing Plans using the Command Line 140

Appendix E: Stopping and Starting the Avocent Services 142

Appendix F: Creating a Server Certificate 143

Appendix G: Error Messages 144

Application error messages 144

DSView software error messages 145

Import and export error messages 145

Installation error messages 147

Appendix H: Technical Support 148

Product Overview

Features and Benefits

Avocent® Data Center Planner is an enterprise class application designed to enable management of server room and data center physical infrastructures.

With Data Center Planner, information technology managers can gain quick and valuable insight into space, power, heat, weight and network connectivity consideration and capacity.

At the heart of this application is a powerful design tool used to model the data center down to the physical device and rack levels. Using the comprehensive Device Library, a data center manager can quickly design or modify an existing floor-mounted device using user interface drag-and-drop operations.

Global view allows you to view individual or multiple data center locations on a visual map along with their properties and capacity visualization.

Plan view enables you to visualize placement of racks and other floor-mounted assets and provides capacity visualization. Using tab navigation, you can open two plans simultaneously.

Rack view allows you to view the front and back of the rack design with a detailed level of clarity and reliability. This view also provides rack properties and capacity visualization.

Asset view allows you to view a single asset. This view also provides asset properties and capacity visualization.

Connection view allows you to create cable-based connections between assets.

Templates can be created for future or repeated use.

Inventory has a repository for placed and unplaced assets.

Capacity Search allows you to search for assets by power, heat, weight, space and user-defined property and value for a selected plan or across all plans.

Planning allows you to create future changes to your data center. Changes are organized into projects by due date and contain groups of tasks that will be executed together. You can select projects to see the effect of changes on the currently selected floor plans.

Project history allows you to view changes to the data center over time.

Attributes

The software attributes allow for easy start-up and integration of data center management.

• Data center floor design and visualization.

• Supports floor tile system and grid detail.

• Visualization and summary data provided at five levels of detail: power, space, weight, heat and networking.

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• Global view - Shows a geographical view of the infrastructure, formed by the combination of a static map overlay, locations, data elements and a visual representation of relationships between locations.

• Plan view - Shows a high-level view of the data center floor plan.

• Rack view - Shows a single rack or multiple racks and all their components.

• Asset view - Shows a single asset and its properties.

• Connection view - Shows asset port connections.

• Supports rack unit (RU) detail.

• Import and export floor plan and asset information.

• Search for assets that are placed or unplaced on floor plans.

• Rack design and visualization.

• Front and back views for mounted assets.

• Intuitive graphical drag and drop of shapes within the floor plan.

• Pan, zoom, move and rotate capabilities.

• Set derated properties for power, heat and weight.

• Colorization - In plan view, you can get a visual picture of capacity parameters. That capability is delivered though color-coded visual cues and static data elements displayed according to user configuration.

• A large device library of preloaded assets.

• Updates provided for requesting new asset types.

• Import and export features custom floor plans.

• Integration with DSView™ software.

• Planning - Plan data center changes in the future by creating projects with scheduled tasks.

• View History.

• Reservations - Reserve space in racks for future utilization.

• Rack Timeline - View progression of changes over a time period.

• Capacity Search - Quickly identifies available capacity regarding space, power, heat, weight and network connectivity.

• End-to-end connection visualization.

• Real world power usage.

• User access control.

Visualization capabilities

Both visualization and design capabilities are accessible at different view levels. The software provides an intuitive method to switch from one view to another.

This feature consists of graphic capabilities that enable you to access a visual representation of the IT infrastructure modeled in the data center. A web browser provides visual representation and depicts the actual infrastructure with a high level of consistency. The software offers a visualization feature measured by dependability, appearance and functionality.

Layout design capabilities

This feature enables the computer-aided design of the IT infrastructure's physical organization, letting you quickly design or replicate the actual infrastructure and capture it in the application modeling data store.

Chapter 1: Product Overview 3

4 Data Center Planner Installer/User Guide

Software Requirements

Getting Started

This chapter describes the configuration and software requirements for installation of the Data Center Planner software.

Server

• Microsoft®Windows®Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition SP2

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP1 (32-bit) Standard Edition

Client

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) Standard Edition

• Red Hat®Enterprise Linux®5.4 (32-bit and 64-bit)

• Red Hat Linux RPM Packages - libXext, libXtst, libXi, xorg-x11-apps, xorg-x11-xauth

• Hardware - Any server class processor with four or more cores, 4 GB or more memory, 16 GB hard disk or SSD

NOTE: Specialized versions of Microsoft Windows Server such asSMB Server and Storage Server are not supported.

NOTE: When the server ison Windows Server 2008 with Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC) enabled, which is

the default, port 8443 and 8092 must be open for remote computers to run the application.

• Microsoft Windows 7 and 8.1 Professional

• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP3 (32-bit support only)

• Microsoft Windows Vista® Business SP2

• Adobe Flash Player 10 (not supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but the non-debug version supports both Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Linux)

• Adobe Flash Player 11

• Hardware - Intel® i7 Core Processor - dual or more core, 4GB or more ram and 100 Mbits/s or faster network

Browsers

• Firefox® 3

• Microsoft Internet Explorer® 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11

• Google Chrome™

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Network connection

For use over wide area network (WAN), a connection of 1.5 MB or more and network latency less than 150 ms is required.

Other software

• Adobe® Reader®

• Microsoft Excel® 2003

• Crystal Reports® 2008 or 2011 (optional)

The minimum screen resolution required is 1024 x 768. At this resolution, it is necessary to view the application in full-screen mode.

NOTE: If Microsoft Office is not installed on the client, you can onlysave floor plans asAll Files(*.*). Floor plans export properly, but the file does not get an extension, which makes Excel software hesitant to open it. The filename shouldhave the .xls extension.

Supported database types

• Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)

• Microsoft SQL Server 2012

• PostgreSQL Version 9.1 (32-bit and 64-bit)

• PostgreSQL Version 8.4.2

Supported languages

• English

• Chinese Simplified

• Japanese

• French

• German

• Russian

• Spanish

NOTE: Red Hat Enterpr ise 5.4 server is supported for these languages using Microsoft XP SP3 Client on a PostgreSQL database.

Configuration assumptions

The configuration and benchmarking provided in this chapter are based on testing with dedicated physical machines. Use of the Data Center Planner software within a virtual machine is not supported in a production environment. While the application is known to work using VMWare’s virtualization, no guarantees or configurations are offered for its support. In addition, there are known problems using Microsoft virtualization products and other virtualization solutions such as Sun’s VirtualBox have not been tested.

Minimum system recommendations

While the default installation of Data Center Planner assumes a single server installation of the application and database server, with co-resident application and database servers, the multi-tier architecture of the application allows it to be distributed across multiple servers in order to offer increased scalability and performance.

The recommended arrangement configuration for a distributed system is to install the application server on a separate machine from the PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server® installation.

The following table captures the minimum and recommended system recommendations for CPUs, memory, and I/O for the application and database server based on configuration benchmark testing within our test labs. The minimum configuration should be sufficient for installations of 50 racks or less per floor plan. The recommended configuration has been tested with 1000 racks per floor plan.

Table 2.1: Minimum System Recommendations

Recommended CPU Memory I/O Comments

Minimum

Recommended

Processor: Single core Pentium 4, Speed: 2.8 GHz

Processor: Quad core Intel Xeon processor, 4MB cache, Speed: 2 GHz or greater

2GB

4GB or greater

Standard desktop configuration

SATA class I/O consistent with RAID5 using 7200 rpm drives

Chapter 2: Software Requirements 7

Application Server and DBMS on separate machines. Hardware requirements are identical for both.

Hardware considerations

While the hardware described provides satisfactory performance for day-to-day operation of the software, some operations that are I/O intensive, such as importing and exporting Microsoft Excel representations of large floor plans, can take a considerable amount of time directly related to I/O and CPU characteristics of the application server and the database server.

Large floor plan imports and exports times can be reduced up to 50% by using faster CPU’s and I/O. Since imports and exports are considered infrequent events in the daily use, the sizing recommendations are determined based on the regular day-to-day use for building floor plans, device racks and creating future projects with capacity planning.

Tuning considerations

In addition to the impact of hardware configuration, adjustments may be necessary to take advantage of additional memory in either the application server or database server.

Application server

The application server memory is determined by parameters passed to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) hosting the Avocent Management Platform enterprise service bus. These settings are set to provide optimum performance for the application and should not be adjusted.

Database server

PostgreSQL

The PostgreSQL Server can be tuned to take advantage of additional memory by modifying the postgresql.conf file, which is located in the C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.2\data\ directory for Microsoft Windows or in

8 Data Center Planner Installer/User Guide

/var/lib/pgsql/data/ for Red Hat Linux installations.

For a new installation, the directory for Microsoft Windows is C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.4.2\data\ or in opt/PostgreSQL/8.4.2/data/ for Red Hat Linux.

Two configuration variables may be set in that file:

• The shared_buffers variable sets the amount of memory cache used by all PostgreSQL processes. It should be set to 10-25% of total memory available to the database server.

• The following example is from the postgresql.conf file that is configured to reserve 2GB of memory. Please note that changes in this file require restarting the database to take effect.

Resource usage (except WAL)

Memory - shared_buffers = 2GB min 128kB or max_connections at 16kB (This change requires a restart.)

The effective cache size is the amount of kernel cache that can be dedicated to PostgreSQL. Setting this depends on what else is running on the machine. For a dedicated machine, set this to 75% of total memory.

Query tuning

Planner method configuration

• enable_bitmapscan = on

• enable_hashagg = on

• enable_hashjoin = on

• enable_indexscan = on

• enable_mergejoin = on

• enable_nestloop = on

• enable_seqscan = on

• enable_sort = on

• enable_tidscan = on

Planner cost constants

• seq_page_cost = 1.0 measured on an arbitrary scale

• random_page_cost = 4.0 same scale as above

• cpu_tuple_cost = 0.01 same scale as above

• cpu_index_tuple_cost = 0.005 same scale as above

• cpu_operator_cost = 0.0025 same scale as above

• effective_cache_size = 6GB

Microsoft SQL Server 2005

The default memory settings for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 are usually more than adequate. If you have other applications installed on the server machine and wish to change the default settings, adjustments may be made by using the MS SQL Server management studio application.

Chapter 2: Software Requirements 9

Configuring SQL Server’s tempdb

The SQL Server tempdb system database is a global resource that is available to all users connected to an instance of SQL Server. It is used to hold temporary and internal objects that SQL Server uses to perform many different operations.

Performance issues

Because tempdb is used by all databases contained in an instance of SQL Server, it can become a bottleneck for performance. It can also cause degraded performance if a single database continues to grow at a fast pace. In both of these cases, tempdb automatically grows in size. The result is overhead during the execution of queries, updates and other operations.

Determining the appropriate size

It is recommended that the initial size of tempdb be set to 25% of the total user database size. For example, if an instance of SQL Server instance 3 databases of size 250mb, 250mb and 500mb, then the size of tempdb should be calculated as: (250 + 250 + 500) / 4 = 250. Thus, the initial size of tempdb should be set to 250mb in this case.

To set the initial size of the tempdb:

The initial size of tempdb can be set in two ways.

1. The first way requires Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.

a. Connect to the SQL Server instance for which you desire to change tempdb size.

b. Select the instance’s node in the Object Explorer panel.

c. Select the Databases node and the System Databases node under that.

d. Right-click the tempdb node and select Properties.

e. In the dialog box that appears, select the Files tab.

f. Modify the Initial Size (MB) value for “tempdev” in the Database Files table. Set to the value described

in the above Determining the Appropriate Size section.

g. Click OK.

2. Set the initial size of tempdb is by executing the following SQL queries:

a. Get the current size of tempdb:

USE tempdb

EXEC SP_SPACEUSED;

b. Set the desired size of tempdb:

USE master

ALTER DATABASE tempdb

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MODIFY FILE (NAME = ‘tempdev’, SIZE = 250MB);

Installation

Installing Data Center Planner

The following steps take you through the Data Center Planner installation process.

NOTE: Data Center Planner does not support network drive installations. T he software must be installed on a hard drive partition. In addition, the installation isnot supported on a domain controller. It must be installed on a system with a properly configured hostname, which resolvesto the IP address of the server where the application is installed.

To install the application on a Windows machine, run the DataCenterPlanner.exe, or on a Linux machine, run the DataCenterPlanner.bin.

1. The Install Anywhere window launches. This may take several minutes.

2. On the first screen, select a language from the drop-down list. Click OK.

3. On the Data Center Planner Introduction screen, click Next.

4. Accept the Data Center Planner license agreement, and click Next. The Choose Install folder screen opens. On a Linux machine, the path is /usr/local.

5. Accept the Data Center Planner default location folder or choose another location. Click Next.

6. A Database Installation Warning opens advising not to choose Oracle® as a database selection. Click OK.

7. On the Data Center Planner Pre-Installation Summary screen, click Install. This may take several minutes.

8. In the meantime, the Avocent Management Platform (AMP) installation begins. On the AMP Introduction screen, click Next.

9. Accept the AMP license agreement, and click Next.

10. Accept the AMP default location folder or choose another location. Click Next.

11. Enter an AMP default administrator username and password. Confirm the password, and click Next.

12. On the AMP Database Selection screen, there are four options for installing a database:

a. Install a new PostgreSQL database.

• On the PostgreSQL Database installation screen, enter a password, confirm the password, and click Next. Be sure to note the password for editing in PostgreSQL.

• On the Pre-Installation Summary screen, click Install.

b. Connect to existing PostgreSQL database.

c. Connect to existing Oracle database. (Oracle database is not supported for use with Data Center

Planner. If you choose this database, the installation will not perform properly.)

d. Connect to existing Microsoft SQL Server database.

12 Data Center Planner Installer/User Guide

• On the Existing Microsoft SQL Server Database Configuration screen, enter the database server, database name, username and password. Check the Use Unicode Encoding checkbox if required, and click Install.

NOTE: When selecting Microsoft SQL, a domain name is required, use Username:domain\username. An instance name is not required, but you can use MS-SQL-ServerName\InstanceName.

13. It may take several minutes for the database to load.

14. When the AMP installation is complete, click Done.

15. The Data Center Planner installation continues.

16. A message displays advising to wait for the Data Center Planner services to come up before launching the application. Click OK, then click Done.

17. To run the application on a Windows Server, go to Start - All Programs - Avocent - MergePoint Data Center Planner - Avocent - MergePoint Data Center Planner. On a Linux machine, open a browser and point the server where the application was installed.

18. Depending on your browser, a message may appear advising that there is a problem with the web site security certificate. Follow the instructions for installing the browser's security certificate.

19. Next, activate the license to use the application. If the proper license is not activated, you will be unable to manage floor plans. The following errors may occur: the launch site does not display or the launch site displays the correct information under Start - All Programs but no plans can be created, deleted, loaded or imported.

20. After activating the license, create users.

NOTE: You can also access the application from any supported web browser with access to the installed server. The URL is https:// {servername}:8443/console/console.html?root=mergepoint, where {servername} is replaced with the name or IP address of the server upon which the application was installed.

NOTE: When first logging in,if the application doesnot open with the username and password fields, close the browser and wait a few minutes for the database information to load and servicesto start, then try again. F or more information on stopping and starting the services, see Stopping and Starting the Avocent Services on page 142

Installing Data Center Planner on a server with limited or no Internet connection

To install the software with limited or no internet connectivity:

To activate the software on a brown or black site, contact your Technical Support. They will need the host name of the server. They will send you an email with information to activate your software.

Logging into Data Center Planner

A user with roles and rights must be created before using the application. An administrator must create users and assign roles.

To log into Data Center Planner:

1. Select Start - All Programs - Avocent - MergePoint Data Center Planner - Avocent MergePoint Data Center Planner.

Chapter 3: Installation 13

2. Enter the username and password created in user management by the administrator.

3. Click Options to expand all options. Leave the default Authentication Source as Internal.

4. Enable the Remember User checkbox if you want the system to remember your log in information.

5. Click Change Password if you want to change your password.

a. Enter your Username.

b. Enter your old password.

c. Enter a new password.

d. Confirm the new password by entering it again.

e. Click OK.

6. Click Login or press Enter.

7. The application opens to a dialog box with the list of available plans. Depending on your rights, you may or may not have Create Plan and Import Plan as options.

NOTE: If you clickCancel on this dialog box, you cannot place anything on the content area or export a plan.

8. Select a floor plan from the list and click Open or select Create Plan or Import Plan.

9. When a floor plan opens, the application is in current state mode. Depending on your rights, current state, project or history modes are functional accordingly.

Migrating to a New Version of Data Center Planner

Before upgrading to a new version:

1. As a safety precaution, before migrating to a new version, you must backup the database and floor plans.

2. Check to make sure your maintenance agreement is up to date.

3. Check to make sure your hardware and software are up to date.

4. Do not uninstall the software before migrating to a new version. If you do so, you will lose your projects and your database.

5. When a new version is released, you will receive an email with a link to the location for downloading the software and documentation.

6. When you run the executable, it will automatically replace your version, and your current plans will be transferred to the new version.

To migrate to a new version:

1. Run DataCenterPlaner.exe or on a Linux machine, run the DataCenterPlanner.bin.

2. The Install Anywhere window launches. This may take several minutes.

3. On the first screen select a language and click OK.

4. Click Next on the Introduction screen.

5. Accept the License Agreement, and click Next.

14 Data Center Planner Installer/User Guide

6. Accept the default location on the Choose Install Folder screen, and click Next. On a Linux machine, the path will be different.

7. Accept the default on the Installation Upgrade screen, and click Next.

8. On the Pre-Installation Summary screen, click Install. This may take several minutes.

9. Click Done when the installation is complete.

10. Click OK on the Install Complete message. Please allow approximately 30 minutes for the services to come up before launching the application. Please do not restart the server during this time.

11. Once the database has migrated, import all floor plans again, then you can remove the older versions.

Uninstalling Data Center Planner

It is not necessary to uninstall the application before migrating to a new version. If you do uninstall, you will lose your projects, plans and your database. Be sure to backup your database, export your projects to .pdf files for reference and export your plans to spreadsheets.

To uninstall Data Center Planner and Avocent Management Platform (AMP) on a Windows machine:

NOTE: If you uninstallAMP, you may remove other Avocent products that are installed on your system.

1. Select Start - All Programs - Avocent - MergePoint Data Center Planner - Uninstall. The Uninstall Introduction screen opens. Click Uninstall. Click Done when complete.

2. If you desire to remove the AMP program, go to Start - Control Panel - Add or Remove programs and Remove the Avocent Management Platform program. Click Uninstall, then click Done.

3. If you desire to remove the database, highlight PostgreSQL and click Remove the PostgreSQL.

4. After removing the database from your control panel, navigate to C:\Program Files and delete the PostgreSQL folder.

5. Under Program Files also delete the Avocent folder, then navigate to C:\Documents and Settings and delete the Postgres folder.

6. Go to My Computer, right-click and select Manage.

7. Expand Local Users and Groups, and select Users. Delete the postgres user.

8. Go to Start - Control Panel - System and click the Advanced tab.

9. Click Environment Variables.

10. Under System Variables, highlight DVR_HOME, and click Delete.

11. Highlight AMP_HOME, and click Delete.

12. Reboot your computer.

To uninstall on a Linux machine:

1. Right-click on the desktop and select Open Terminal.

2. At the # prompt, enter cd $DVR_HOME. Press Enter.

3. Enter cd Uninstall. Press Enter.

Chapter 3: Installation 15

4. Enter ./Uninstall_Data_Center_Planner. Press Enter.

5. Enter cd $AMP_HOME. Press Enter.

6. Enter cd uninstall. Press Enter.

7. Enter ./Uninstall_AMP. Press Enter.

To remove the PostgreSQL 8.2 application packages:

1. At the prompt, enter rpm -qa /grep -i postgres. Press Enter to view the packages.

2. Enter rpm -e <packagename>. Press Enter to delete the packages.

To remove the PostgreSQL 8.4.2 application packages:

1. At the prompt, enter cd /opt/PostgreSQL/8.4.2/

2. Enter ./install-postgresql. Click Yes.

To remove the Postgres database 8.2 folder:

1. At the prompt, enter cd /var/lib. Press Enter.

2. Enter rm -rf pgsql. Press Enter.

To remove the Postgres database 8.4.2 folder:

1. At the prompt, enter cd /opt/. Press Enter.

2. Enter rm -rf /opt/PostgreSQL/. Press Enter.

To cleanup and remove the Avocent folder:

1. At the prompt, enter cd /usr/local. Press Enter.

2. Enter rm -rf Avocent. Press Enter.

To remove the Avocent xml file:

1. At the prompt, enter cd /opt. Press Enter.

2. Enter rm -rf Avocent. Press Enter.

NOTE: When uninstalling Avocent Management Platform, you may receive the following message: D:\Avocent\docsrefers to a locationthat is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it stillcannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location. This is a Windows Explorer refreshing issue. On the left side of the panel, it looks like the directories are still there. However, unless there is a file that was not removed from the selected directory, Windows willdisplaythe message that the selected directory refers to a location that is unavailable because the selected directory was deleted. ClickOK on the message and itwill refresh and show the remaining directories.

If an uninstall fails on a Microsoft Windows machine, use the following steps to uninstall the software:

1. Uninstall AMP.

2. Start Windows Explorer.

3. Remove the directory where Avocent Management Platform and Data Center Planner were installed.

16 Data Center Planner Installer/User Guide

4. Go to Start - Run.

5. Enter regedit.

6. Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - Software - Microsoft - Windows - CurrentVersion - Uninstall.

7. Remove Data Center Planner and Avocent Management Platform, if they exist.

If an uninstall fails on a Linux machine, use the following steps to uninstall the software:

1. From the Linux terminal, enter cd $AMP_HOME/uninstall. Press Enter.

2. Enter ./Uninstall_AMP. Press Enter.

3. Enter cd /home. Press Enter.

4. Enter rm -rf <top level of the directory where AMP and DVR were installed>. Press Enter.

5. Enter rm -rf /etc/profile.d/amp.sh. Press Enter.

6. Enter rm - rf /etc/profile.d/dvr.sh. Press Enter.

User Management

Managing Users

Before using Data Center Planner, an administrator must create users and assign roles to users. Data Center Planner utilizes existing and custom authentication methods to create and authorize new users and establish roles and effective rights.

The administrator does not have rights for any other part of the application. They can only log into the application and select User Management and Licensing to manage users and activate licenses unless other rights are assigned.

Authentication

Internal authentication is configured automatically when the Avocent Management Platform is installed.

External Authentication

Data Center Planner also allows External Authentication and Authorization through LDAP and Active Directory. External authentication is based on plugging in external services to the Authentication Manager. All instance creation is managed using the configuration console. The Avocent server authenticates to the actual external authentication service when doing instance creation. If you can normally authenticate to a service, the same rights should be adequate for creating an external authentication instance using the Avocent server. For additional information, see External Authentication and Authorization on page 137.

Users

These options are used to manage users, groups and external group mappings.

Permissions

Permissions are a relationship between a user and a role. A role is a set of rights and targets.

Rights

For a role to be effective, it must have a right. A role can be created without targets, and it can be assigned to users, groups and collections.

The following descriptions are default roles that can be assigned to a user and the rights assigned to them. For additional information, see Roles on page 20.

• User - Persons authenticated with access to the authorization system. Only the unique identifier of the person is stored.

• Effective Rights - Used to identify the effective rights for users, rights and targets.

• Permission - An unnamed association of a user and role.

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• Role - A set of rights used in conjunction with a user and a target to create permissions. Each role has a unique name within the system.

• Groups - Groups can be created and users assigned to a group or groups.

The current roles are:

Avocent Administrator - Performs user management functions only, such as add, assign and edit users, permissions and roles.

Data Center Planner-Executor - Can perform the same functions as a read-only user and commit tasks within a project.

Data Center Planner-Manager - Has read-write permissions.

Data Center Planner-Planner - Can perform the same functions as read-only users, plus view, edit and create projects. The planner role does not have access to import, create or delete current floor plans.

NOTE: A planner can only create templatesin the context of a project. Unlike the manipulation of assets and their properties in project planning, the templates created by a planner are available across all floor plans and time and can be used by anyone in the current state, providing they have permissions.

Data Center Planner Project Review - Can perform the same functions as read-only users plus view projects and history but cannot create or make changes to current floor plans or projects. A project reviewer can click the Revalidate button to refresh a project making sure the project is current.

Data Center Planner - ReadOnly - Can open global view, view floor plans, racks, assets, connections and history, but cannot make changes in any view.

Reporting Designer - Can create reports using Crystal Reports.

Reporting Viewer - Can view reports.

Creating Users

To create new users:

1. Log in as an administrator and select User Management from the primary navigation panel.

2. Select Users from the secondary navigation panel.

3. Select New from the Actions, Users pane.

4. Enter a username. Do not use any spaces in the username.

5. Enter a password. The password should be between 8 and 65 characters, contain at least one alphabetic and one numeric character and contain at least one upper case and one lower case letter, then confirm the password by entering it again.

6. To assign the new user to a group, select Groups from the left tree.

7. Select a group from the Available groups column, click on a group, then click the right arrow to move it to the Selected groups column, and click OK.

8. To assign the new user account information, select Properties from the left tree.

9. Enable the appropriate boxes, add an expiration date if necessary, and click OK. The new user is added to the list of users.

10. Select Permissions from the secondary navigation panel to assign the new user a role.

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11. Under the Permissions pane, expand the AllUsers option.

12. Click on the new user just created.

13. Under Actions, Roles, click Assign Role.

14. From the Available roles column, click on a role, then click the right arrow to move the role to the Selected roles column.

15. Click OK. The new role is added to the Roles, Assigned column.

16. Click User in the left, and on the bottom of the content screen, you can enter contact information for the user.

To add a group and assign users to groups:

1. Select Users from content panel.

2. Select New Group from Actions, User, Groups pane.

3. Enter a name for the new group.

4. In the Available users column, click the desired users to add to the new group, then click the right arrow to move the users to the Selected users column.

5. Click OK. The new group is added to the Groups column.

NOTE: The application supports using specialcharacters when naming groups. Use Active Directory naming conventions, such as alphabeticalcharacters (Aa-Zz), numeric characters (0-9) , the minussign "-" and the period ".". Do not include spaces, ampersand, more than/less than brackets, slashes, colon or semi-colon (&,<>, /, :,;).

Changing a password

There are two ways to change a password:

• An administrator can change a password in the User Management menu under Users.

• A user other than an administrator can use the login options.

To change a password by using the log in options:

1. You must be logged out of the application.

2. On the log in screen, click Options to expand all options.

3. Click Change Password.

a. Enter your username.

b. Enter your old password.

c. Enter a new password, then confirm the new password by entering it again. Click OK.

4. Log in with the new password.

To change a password by using the administrator log in:

1. Log into User Management.

2. Select Users from the secondary navigation panel.

3. Click AllUsers under the Groups column.

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4. Select a user under the User name column.

5. Click Edit under User in the Actions column.

6. Click Change Password.

7. Enter a new password.

8. Confirm the new password. Click OK.

9. The Change password was successful message opens. Click OK.

Roles

Roles are managed from User Management in the primary menu, are related to permissions and contain rights, collection and targets associations.

To add a role:

1. Select User Management from the primary menu.

2. Click Permissions in the secondary menu.

3. In the lower pane, under Roles Management, Actions, select New.

4. Enter a name for the new role in the name field.

5. Click Available Rights in the left tree.

6. Expand the Avocent Data Center Management option.

7. Expand the appropriate option for Collection, Project or Plan.

8. Enable the appropriate boxes to assign to the new role, and click OK.

9. The associated rights are displayed in the Rights column.

To edit a role:

The Avocent Administrator role cannot be edited.

1. Select the role to be edited, and click Edit under Actions.

2. Change the name or click Available Rights in the left tree.

3. Expand the Avocent Data Center Management option.

4. Expand the appropriate option for Collection, Project or Plan.

5. Enable or disable the appropriate boxes to edit the role, and click OK.

6. The new associated rights are displayed in the Rights column.

To delete a role:

The Avocent Administrator role cannot be deleted.

1. Select the role to be deleted, and click Delete under Actions.

2. A confirmation message displays. Click Yes to delete the role.

To copy a role:

1. Select the role to be copied, and click Copy under Actions.

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