Content Comparison

The Job Self Approval setting allows or disables the ability of job authors to approve the jobs they create. Job Requires User Credentials defines when job script execution needs command-line credentials for the devices against which the job runs.

Concurrent Jobs, the number of maximum concurrent Config Management jobs, defaults at 20 and is available only on NT-4000 NetMRI platforms.

Data Collection

Settings related to the deduplication of devices discovered from multiple collectors.

Enable the load balancer turns on the load balancing feature for moving devices from highly-loaded collectors to less loaded collectors.

Minimum capacity utilization sets the minimum percentage of devices, from collector's total capacity in terms of managed devices, at which moving devices from such collectors is allowed.

Minimum capacity utilization difference sets the minimum difference, in percentage, in the current devices utilization by collectors, at which devices can be moved to the less loaded collector.

Timeout for choosing the collector sets the maximum allowable time, in hours, for choosing the best management collector for the device.

For more information, see Deduplication and Load Balancing Settings.

Discovery

Several Discovery settings that affect how devices are collected in the NetMRI database. Device Expiration in Days governs the 'stickiness' of device records in the database.

Default Naming Priority allows setting of DNS or SNMP as the primary protocol for naming devices when added to the database.

Ping Sweep Frequency determines the elapsed time period, in hours, between ping sweeps within IP address ranges (default value 24).

Enabling the Discovery Ignore Duplicate MACs setting forces NetMRI to delete pre-existing records for a switch identified by a specific MAC address should the device change its assigned IP. Discovery Truncate IP History prevents IPs that aren't assigned to interfaces from being assigned in NetMRI to particular devices, which preserves the functions of the Cisco ip alias command where needed.

The SNMPv1/SNMPv2c Discovery Version setting allows a choice between three options: Use SNMPv1 for credential discovery; Use SNMPv2c for credential discovery; or Use both SNMPv2c and SNMPv1 for credential discovery. See Choosing SNMP Protocol Preferences for related information.

SDN Network Mapping Policy enables or disables the policy of mapping SDN networks to network views.

SDN Discovery enables or disables discovery of SDN controllers.

Default SDN Virtual Network sets the ID of the default network to map collected SDN networks.

NIOS Administration

Define the NIOS administrator login password, used primarily for Automation Change Management applications (see Automation Change Manager (ACM) and associated topics for more details).

Notification

Choose the Syslog facility used for tagging Syslog notifications.

Reports

Define the number of concurrent reports allowed to run on the NetMRI appliance (Concurrent Running Reports). The default is 2 and should be retained in most cases.

Security

Switch Port Management

Settings to Convert Free Ports to Available ports on a switch, following a certain number of days after interfaces are disconnected from an end device; and the ARP Cache Refresh Period, which causes NetMRI to issue pings to discovered devices before collecting switch port information. This can have a beneficial effect on the availability of devices in Cisco Catalyst switch forwarding tables when NetMRI does its periodic query of those forwarding tables.

The ARP Cache Refresh Ignore Discovery Ranges Advanced Setting helps to optimize the discovery of end hosts by disabling pinging of such devices outside of specified discovery ranges. By default, this feature is set to False, which means that devices outside the configured discovery ranges will be pinged by NetMRI. Set this value to True if deemed necessary.

Switch Port Management can use the new Advanced Setting ARP Cache Refresh Device History to enable pinging of devices from older tables compiled from previous polling days, prior to the most recently compiled End Host data tables. The default value is 14 days and the minimum value is one day. This feature helps rediscover devices that move off the managed network and eventually rejoin, such as laptops returning from travel.

System

Provides a pair of helpful settings for NIOS IPAM Sync functionality (IPAM Sync Retries and IPAM Sync Retry Interval).

Also provides JVM server settings that default to zero and should only be modified if the NetMRI appliance is a VM running under VMware.

Block Device Prompt access prohibits the use of device prompts (shell) through the web UI and Admin Shell. You may need this to prevent access to your devices from anywhere except your jump hosts. If you are running NetMRI in redundant mode, contact support to disable this setting. Once disabled, this setting can only be reverted by the Infoblox Support team.

User Administration

User Administration settings, found and 5 of Advanced Settings, to determine the required length of passwords, whether a password should be more complex, the number of permitted login failures before lockout, and more. See Advanced User Administration Settings for details.

User Interface