Cisco Switch Management

djd80

Hi All

We are going to be taking over the day to day running of 60 switches where I work soon and I have a couple of quick questions.

We all have the basics, how to open a port, close a port, add port security, lock ports to mac addresses etc and we will be doing this via telnet

While this is all nice and dandy is there any free tool , or one not too expensive out there, which would allow us to do this graphically?

I have had a search but cant find any although I'm sure you gang on here will point me in the right direction...

Thanks

srdb20

I think what you might be looking for is the Cisco Network Assistant

If not let me know and i can reccomend a few others,

Cheers

djd80

Hiya

I had a look at cisco network assistant but could not get it to connect to any of our switches,,,possibly something to do with the http ports on the switch but its not something we can change in order to get it working....


Any other ideas?

Alun

In order to get something like Cisco Network Assistant to work properly you'll almost certainly have to set various things on the switches first, be it setting up snmp community strings, configuring ssh access, user id's, privileg levels and passwords etc. and you'll have to use the CLI (command line interface) to do that. If you're not able / allowed to do that, or even to get someone else higher up in the organization to do it for you, then that begs the question of how / why you're being asked to maintain these switches in the first place.

As a simple alternative, depending on the model of the switches and whether the appropriate software has been installed you may be able to access the switches web based configuration utilities. Again, you'll have to allow this on the switches, also via the CLI, first. A warning though, the web based interfaces on Cisco kit can be pretty clunky and limited in their capabilities. Pretty much any consumer grade equipment can wipe the floor with them in this regard. Real men use the CLI

axer

dar_d wrote: »

We all have the basics, how to open a port, close a port, add port security, lock ports to mac addresses etc and we will be doing this via telnet

Use SSH not telnet!
I would stay with the CLI. Make sue you have an uptodate network map.

Alun

axer wrote: »

Use SSH not telnet!
I would stay with the CLI. Make sue you have an uptodate network map.

Or if you're a bit wary of accessing the CLI directly from a terminal program, use something like WinAgent's HyperConf (http://www.winagents.com/en/products/hyperconf/index.php) which will hold your hand for you a bit, and also facilitates maintaining versions of configurations for you. As a bonus it works on other manufacturers' kit too not just Cisco.

Stky10

Ciscoworks/Ciscoview/Solarwinds Engineer Toolkit etc

But they depend on the same requirements as Network Assistant (user account, SNMP strings etc), so you'll either sort that out, or depend on CLI. Personally I'd recommend CLI. There'll be a time and a place that you won't be able to use the GUI, and you'll need to be able to do the same job via CLI.

Besides not being able to use the CLI is pretty much the network engineers equivalent of a unix sys admin not knowing how to use vi

djd80

Thanks for all the advice....I dont proclaim to know switches configuration inside out but I'm ok at the basics, I can hear ye crying, dont let him near them!!

One more quick question, considering I'm going with using the CLI does anyone know of a program which I could map out the switches graphically and label them and input the IP address and then say by double clicking on a switch icon connect via telnet? Don't know if there is something free like that out there but I'm sure you guys can tell me

Stky10

Ciscoview, WhatsUpGold, Openview etc etc