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Note: The switches and switch-routers have already been discovered by NetMRI. Switch Port Management polls switches for a detailed collection of information on switch port connectivity, status of ports and end devices. For information, see Running the Setup Wizard, Configuring Network Discovery Settings and Running Network Discovery on Routed and Switched Networks.
NetMRI gives explicitly licensed devices priority in determining which devices to manage. Unlicensed devices continue to be managed by the appliance, but the appliance periodically collects only basic discovery data. See Other Network View Operations for more information.
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Note: The All Devices category is also a device group, and you can get a complete view of the switched network by selecting it.
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The Capacity SummarySummar
y – Ports appears at the top of the Switch Port Management page, indicating several basic pieces of information:Anchor bookmark239 bookmark239
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- Available Ports %: The percentage of all managed switch ports appearing as Available.
- PoE Ports: The count of Cisco switched Ethernet ports running the Power over Ethernet switching protocol for IP telephony applications.
Choosing Devices Present shows the total of all switches' contributions to each of the six capacity categories. Choosing any other device group rewrites the Capacity Summary – Ports pane to reflect the subset of values for the selected device group
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Beneath the Capacity Summary – Ports pane, the Devices Present table appears displaying the data sets for all devices in the chosen data group. Each table row reflects a data set record obtained from LAN switching devices from a process called polling. The Devices Present table designation is for all devices in the chosen data set–not for all devices in the network.
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Switch Port Management (SPM) Date/Period menus enable flexible measurement and reporting for any device, interface or end host. You can effectively go backwards
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For any page in SPM, clicking the icon on the top left of the table displays the Select Date/Period menu. The Select Date/Period menu fixes the current SPM page to a specific date or range of dates, going backwards from the current date, using a drop-down calendar.
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You can apply switch port management polling settings to device groups. These settings, located under the Settings icon –> Setup –> Collection and Groups –> Groups tab, take precedence over the settings defined in the Global tab.
In NetMRI, network polling automatically takes place every 90 minutes. This setting can be lowered to a minimum value of 30 minutes.
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Device polling combines with NetMRI's configuration management features (the ability, for example, to quickly pull up and edit a given LAN or distribution switch's configuration files) to provide a workflow to quickly respond to issues in the switched network.
Multiple polling schedules can be applied per device group. For example, a user can schedule polling to run every Sunday at 3AM and 6PM.
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- View Device History: Choosing this option displays the Device Viewer in a separate browser window. The device window automatically displays the Device History, with the most recent History record at the top. In the Device History view, the First Seen time stamp is the first time the device's MAC address was discovered.
- The Last Last Seen timestamp represents the most recent time that NetMRI communicated with the device (often the most recent polling event). The device Name is the configured name of the switching device. The device's IP address is also shown, along with the DNSName if any. A standard Description (taken directly from the device) is given along with the PollDuration. If the PollDuration shows a value of "1" the polling process completed in the normal time period.
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All ports that appear in tables described in this section are a subset of all ports discovered and managed by NetMRI. Interface tables outside of the Switch Port Management feature set will include such items as trunk ports and routed ports from routers and switch routers as catalogued and described by NetMRI.
View Interface History displays the Interface Viewer in
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In the interface history, the First Seen and Last Seen timestamps indicate the first occasion when the network switch was polled by Switch Port Management, and the last occasion when the device was polled or otherwise detected on the network.
The history also shows the Device Name, along with the Interface identifier and a brief description, its MAC address, operating and administrative status, the Line Speed, and Duplex settings if known and supported.
Several SPM port control settings are also available from the Actions menu. Choosing a menu option displays a dialog for the port configuration change. You can configure the following:
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The appliance also tracks the time period required to collect switch-forwarding data and compare the result to the last ARP refresh. Once a timeout period is exceeded, NetMRI will re-perform the refresh on the switch, and repeat as necessary as data is collected from the device.
The appliance automatically performs an ARP cache refresh immediately before a new switch port polling session.