Netgear NMS200 Reference Guide

NETGEAR® ProSafe® NMS200 Network Management Software

Quick Reference Manual

350 East Plumeria Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
USA

September 2010
202-10727-01
v1.1

NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

©2010 NETGEAR, Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated

into any language in any form or by any means without the written permission of NETGEAR, Inc.

Technical Support

Thank you for choosing NETGEAR. To register your product, get the latest product updates, or get support online,
visit us at http://support.netgear.com.

Phone (US & Canada only): 1-888-NETGEAR
Phone (Other Countries):
Web: www.netgear.com/Products/Software/NetworkManagementSoftware/NMS200.aspx

http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/984/related/1

Trademarks

NETGEAR, the NETGEAR logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of NETGEAR, Inc. Microsoft, Windows,
Windows NT, and Vista are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other brand and product names are
registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders.

Statement of Conditions

To improve internal design, operational function, and/or reliability, NETGEAR reserves the right to make changes
to the products described in this document without notice. NETGEAR does not assume any liability that may occur
due to the use, or application of, the product(s) or circuit layout(s) described herein.

Revision History

Publication Part Number Version Publish Date Comments

202-10727-01 v1.1 September 2010 First publication

2 |

Chapter 1 Overview

Introducing NMS200 NETGEAR® ProSafe® Network Management Software

5

System Basics 5
Supported Operating System Versions 5
Hardware Recommendations 6
Basic Network Considerations 6

Authentication 7
Name Resolution 7
Protocols 8
Fixed IP Address 8
Updating Your License 8

The Application Interface 9

Managing Multiple Screens 9

Screen Layouts 10
Getting Started 11
Installation and Startup 11
Starting the Client 15

Troubleshooting 16
Discovering Resources 16

Scheduling Discovery 22
Monitoring Performance 23

Default Monitors 23
Create a Dashboard View 23
Install a Monitor in the View 23
Reports From Monitors 26

Managing Resources 26
Alarm Panels 28

Alarm Severity & Count 28
Alarm Manager 28

Chapter 2 Common Tasks

Administering the Application 31

Users and User Groups 32

User Manager 32

User Groups 33

Permissions 33
Scheduling Operations 35
Common Management Tasks 36

Mapping Equipment 37
Reports 37

Branding Reports 41

| 3

Chapter 3 Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Tips 43

Name Resolution 43
Common Issues 44

Index

NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

4 |

NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

1. Overview

Introduction

This Quick Reference Guide will help you start using your Product Name & Model as quickly
and productively as possible. After a review of the hardware and software requirements
needed for your installation in System Basics, you can move on to Installation and Startup on
page 11. To start using the software, see Discovering Resources on page 16.

This software includes reporting capabilities. These are described in online help. Key
features available in this software are the following:

• Deep Discovery — Detailed device information retrieved automatically.

• Real time monitoring of Alarms that impact your network. (See Alarm Panels on

page 28.)

• A Resource inventory available at a glance. (See Managing Resources on page 26)

• Configurable Detail Panels below the display of listed devices. These tell you about

devices you select.

1

For more detailed descriptions of features, see the User Manual or online help.

Tip: If you want to find something but are unsure about which manual

contains it, you can search all the Acrobat files in a single directory. For
example, in Acrobat v.8, Shift+Ctrl+F opens a directory-wide,
multi-document search.

System Basics

System requirements vary depending how you use the application and the operational
environment. Because we do not know your specific network and devices, the
recommendations are based on typical, not definitive configurations.

Base the minimum configuration of any system on its expected peak load. Your installation
should spend 95% of its time idle and 5% of its time trying to keep pace with the resource
demands.

Supported Operating System Versions

The following are supported operating system versions:

• Microsoft

Enterprise.

®

Windows Server® 2003 (Standard, Enterprise, and Web), Server 2008

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Note: Windows Terminal Server is not supported. The installer becomes

non-responsive with Data Execution Prevention enabled. This option
is disabled by default on Windows Server 2008, but is enabled on a
Windows Server 2008 machine running Terminal Server.

• Microsoft Windows XP (Professional) with current patches applied, including SP3.

• Microsoft Windows Vista (Business and above)

• Windows 7

CAUTION:

You must disable User Access Control if you are installing on Vista,
Windows Server 2008, or Windows 7. Also: Installer may halt when
pre-existing bash sessions or cmd sessions are open. Close all such
sessions. Also: This application cannot co-exist with other installations of
Cygwin on the same Windows computer. Do not install it where Cygwin is
already installed, either separately or as part of another application. If
Cygwin is already installed, remove it before installing this application. If
you do not see any obvious indication Cygwin is installed (like an icon on
the desktop or program list, or a directory named c:\Cygwin), but suspect it
is, you can open the registry (Start > Run, then type

HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Cygnus Solutions > Cygwin.

regedit

), and look for

Hardware Recommendations

NETGEAR® ProSafe® NMS200 Network Management Software contains an Application
Server that runs continuously in the background, and a Client (the user interface you actually

see). You can start and stop the client portion of the software without impacting the
application server. Device monitoring stops when you stop the application server or turn off its
host machine. The client can also be on a different machine than the application server.
Hardware recommendations are based on the different types of installation available:

Full Installation (Application server + Client) — Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz CPU, 2G RAM, and
20G available disk space.

Client only — Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz, 2G RAM, and 1G available disk space.

Basic Network Considerations

The Network Management software communicates over the network. The machine it is on
must be connected to a network for the application to start successfully. Normally the client
and server portions of the management system will be installed on the same system. The
system where the management server is installed must be configured with a static IP

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address.The fixed IP address is required for the managment server to communicate with the
managed devices.

Firewalls, or even SNMP management programs using the same port on the same machine
where this software is installed can interfere with communication with your equipment. Your
network may have barriers to communication with this software. Dealing with such barriers,
initial device configuration to accept management, security measures or firewalls is outside
the scope of these instructions. Consult with your network administrator to ensure this
software has access to the devices you want to manage with the

Protocols described below.

Tip: One simple way to check connectivity from a Windows machine to a

device is to open a command shell with Start > Run

[device IP address]

at the command line. If the device responds, it is

cmd

. Then, type

ping

connected to the network. If not, consult your network administrator to
correct this. No useful information comes from disconnected or
powered-down devices.

See Chapter 4, Troubleshooting in this guide or see the User Manual, or online help, for
additional information about how to troubleshoot this software.

Authentication

For successful discovery of the resources on your network, this software requires
authenticated management access to the device. To get this access, you must provide the
correct SNMP community strings, WMI login credentials, and any other command-line
(Telnet / SSH) or browser (HTTP/HTTPS) authentication, and SNMP must be turned on, if
that is not the device’s default. Some devices require pre-configuration to recognize this
management software. Consult your network administrator for this information.

Name Resolution

The network management server and client require resolution of equipment names to work
completely, whether by host files or domain name system (DNS). The application server
cannot respond to hosts with IP addresses alone. The application server might not even be in
the same network and therefore the host would be unable to connect.

If your network does not have DNS, you can also assign hostnames in

%windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

addition to an IP address somewhere in the system. Here are some example hosts file
contents (including two commented lines where you would have to remove the # sign to
make them effective):

# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

on Windows. You must assign a hostname in

127.0.0.1 localhost

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NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

CAUTION:

This software supports installation only on the local file system. Avoid
installing to shared drives.

Protocols

The network managament software uses the following protocols: TCP/IP, SNMP, HTTP/S,
UDP Multicast.

Fixed IP Address

The network managament software includes a web server and must be installed on a host
with a fixed IP address or a permanently assigned Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP)
lease. For trial purposes, you can rely on a dynamic IP address assignment with a long lease,
but this is not recommended for production installations.

If you do change your host’s IP address:
To accommodate a changed IP address, first delete the contents of

your local IP address anywhere it appears in

\owareapps\installprops\lib\installed.properties

Alternatively, in a shell, after running

ipaddresschange -n

followed by the new IP address to which you want to change.

oware

to set the environment, you can run

\oware\temp

. Then restart your machine.

. Change

Updating Your License

If you have a limited license — for example NETGEAR® ProSafe® NMS200 Network
Management Software by default limits discovery to five devices — then your application
does not function outside those licensed limits. If you purchase additional licenses, put the
updated license file in a convenient directory, then use the Settings > Permissions > Register

License menu item to open a file browser. Locate the license file, and click the Register
License button. Your updated license should be visible in Settings > Permissions > View
Licenses. Go to www.netgear.com/nms200 for more information on licenses.

Note: You must also re-register licenses if you have updated your

installation from a previous version where you previously upgraded
licenses. In any case, you must restart the application server or wait
up to 15 minutes before a license modification is effective. If you
import a license that, for example, changes the application’s
expiration date, it does not immediately take effect. You must restart
the application server or wait at least 15 minutes.

If you license new features, you must restart the application server and client.

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The Application Interface

Figure 1 shows a typical screen. The navigation panel to the left provides quick access to

common functions (discovery, reports, and so on), which can also be accessed through the
menus. When visible the left panel remains on screen while the main panel changes to reflect
the currently selected function.

Figure 1. Discovery Screen

Main Panel

Nodes that appear in the navigation panel depend on installed options.

Managing Multiple Screens

The content of the Main Panel is referred to as a window. Just as you can open several
documents in your word processor, you can open several windows in this application. To see
the list of windows you have open, click the Window menu.

In the Browser View setting, you can see only one active window at a time. You cannot tile or
minimize these windows unless you select Multiple Document Interface (MDI) View (the
default
Launcher menu.

Figure 2. Window Menu

in NETGEAR® ProSafe® NMS200 Network Management Software) from the View >

Chapter 1: Overview | 9

NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

s

If you right-click a device, for example, and select Open, the editor screen that appears does
not close the screen where you selected the device. Both remain open. You can navigate
between screens by selecting them in the Window menu, or with the browser buttons.

Figure 3. Browser Buttons and Select Layout / Select Content

The right and left arrows just left of the Select Layout pick list navigate backward and forward
through the open screens. To close a screen layout, click the Close button to the right of the
browser buttons and layout selectors.

Note: If you open more than 20 windows, the “Recommended Open

Windows Exceeded” error message appears. To change the
recommended number, consult the NMS200 User Guide. While you
can still open more windows, doing so may slow performance.

Screen Layouts

When you select PrintersResources in the Navigation Panel, for example, the default view
looks like Figure 4.

Figure 4. Default View

A list of
all Equip­ment and
their attri­butes

Detail Panel
Information
for the
selected
device and

Main Panel

The lower portion of the screen displays detail panels with information about the equipment
selected in the upper panel. For details about changing and managing screen layouts, see

Managing Layouts on page 32.

associated

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NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

Getting Started

This section outlines the steps in a typical installation and first use. This section does not
describe all the details of possible installations. Refer to the NMS200 User Guide or online
help for additional information. A typical installation will consist of the following:

1. Installation and Startup— See the NMS200 User Guide for additional information.

2. Discovering Reasources — After you first install the application, you must discover the

equipment you want to manage.

3. Alarm Panels — See Alarm Panels for a discussion of alarms and events managed by the

application.

You can also set up users, device access passwords, and groups for both users and devices.
For example, use Group Operations to perform or schedule operations on multiple devices.
Consult the NMS200 User Guide for details about administration and the many additional
discovery, management, and reporting options available.

Note: Best practice is to use the default Admin user unless security

concerns dictate otherwise. If you must add a new user, best
practice is to add that user to a User Group and modify that group’s
permissions rather than adding permissions user-by-user
Also: bash.exe or md5sum.exe (two files that are installed with this
product) may trigger false positives with some anti-virus software. If
you get a virus detection warning for these files during installation,
take no action.

Installation and Startup

For a basic installation, install and start your management software with these steps:

1. Unzip (decompress) the file if you downloaded the application in

any applications that might interfere with this installation.

2. To install this software, log in to your computer as an administrator-type user that can install

software, and run either
the root user.

win_install.exe

. Do not install as a user named “admin” or as

.zip

format, and close

Chapter 1: Overview | 11

NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

In Linux, the installing user must have a home directory, and must have permissions to
write both there and in the installation’s target directory. At one point the Linux installation
stops and asks the installing user to run a script in a separate shell as root user. Other
than these differences, to install on both Windows and Linux, you must follow these
steps. After initiating installation, click Next.

CAUTION:

You must install as a non-root user with the permission to create
directories in the selected installation target path. Installing to a directory
that requires root level access fails.
Also: Using the login “admin” to do the installation wipes out any
pre-configured “admin” permissions that come with the application.
Therefore, do not use “admin” as the installing user account.

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3. Confirm your hardware meets the displayed Minimum System Requirements. These

instructions assume a full install. Both the client and management server software will be
installed on the same system. Click Next.

4. Accept the license agreement after reading it, otherwise, you cannot proceed. Click Next.

5. Confirm or alter the installation path. Click Next.

6. Select either Full installation or Client installation. (You must install the Full installation on at

least one machine before the Client will work on any others.) Click Next.

Chapter 1: Overview | 13

NMS200 Quick Reference Manual

7. View the final confirmation of components to install. Click Next.

Observe the progress bar as files are copied for installation.

8. The database size typically defaults to 2G with unlimited expansion.

9. Click Finish.

10. In a Windows installation, notice the Server Monitor icon (

) in the system tray. When the

icon turns green, you can start your application client. This icon indicates the application
server’s status. Green is running, red is stopped, yellow is starting or stopping. Application
server monitors your devices even when the client is not visible, or you are not logged into
your machine. Best practice is to install the application server to a host you do not turn off if
you want constant monitoring of your devices.

Note: This software is a Java application. Virtual memory use increases

when you install it. This is normal. If you monitor memory use over
time it may appear that it is growing. This is a normal function of
Java's memory management.

You can also uninstall this product as you would any other. Go to Add/Remove Programs in
Windows’ Control Panel, for example. Uninstalling removes all installed files and files created
by using the installed system (that it has permission to delete). It does not remove directories
that were not created by this application’s installation or runtime. User-created directories in
the product’s directory path or desktop short cuts remain after product removal.

Starting the Client

After you verify that the application server is started (in Windows, the monitor icon in the
system tray turns green), use the Start button (or its Linux equivalent) to find NETGEAR®
ProSafe® NMS200 Network Management Software among your programs. This is under

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