Document toolboxDocument toolbox

Viewing Cloud Objects

When you enable the Cloud Network Automation license on the Grid Master, NIOS adds the ability to view new cloud objects such as Tenants and VM IP addresses. You can view cloud objects and their related information in the Cloud tab of Grid Manager. The Cloud tab provides the following sub tabs for viewing different information related to cloud objects: Tenants, VPCs, Networks, VMs (by IP Address), and Cloud Platform Members.
In addition to viewing data in these tabs, you can do the following:

  • Click the Action icon  and select an action from the menu.
    • Select Show Active Users to view all the users who are currently active on the Active Directory domain. For information, see Viewing Active Network Users.
  • Modify some of the data in the table. Double click a row, and either modify the data in the field or select an item from a drop-down list. Click Save to save the changes. Note that some fields are read-only.
  • Edit the properties of an object.
    • Select the object, and then click the Edit icon.
  • Export the list of objects to a .csv file.
    • Click the Export icon.
  • Print the list of objects.
    • Click the Print icon.
  • Use filters and the Goto function to narrow down the list. With the autocomplete feature, you can just enter the first few characters of an object name in the Goto field and select the object from the possible matches.
  • Create a quick filter to save frequently used filter criteria:
    • In the filter section, click Show Filter and define filter criteria for the quick filter.
    • Click Save and complete the configuration In the SaveQuickFilter dialog box.

The appliance adds the quick filter to the quick filter drop-down list in the panel. Note that global filters are prefixed with [G], local filters with [L], and system filters with [S].

Viewing All Tenants

The Tenants tab lists all tenants from the CMP. Tenant is an abstract administrative concept. Similar to a tenant in the CMP, a tenant object in NIOS encompasses all network elements such as networks, zones, VMs, and IP addresses (fixed and floating), network views, default DNS view, and all related extensible attributes associated with that tenant. Multiple tenants can be mapped to the same network view. A tenant can also have VMs (with IP addresses) in its shared or external networks that are in different network views.
In Grid Manager, you can click a tenant name in the Cloud tab -> Tenants tab and drill down to the Networks and VMs (by IP Address) sub tabs to view networks and VMs associated with the selected tenant. In the Tenants tab -> VMs tab, you can click a VM name and drill down more to view the Networks and IP Addresses sub tabs for the selected VM. You can always click the bread crumb at the top of the viewer to go back to the Tenants home tab.
Each tenant has a name and a unique tenant ID. The tenant ID is provided through cloud API requests. You cannot create or delete tenant objects through Grid Manager. All tenants are created and deleted through cloud API requests. However, you can modify the name, extensible attributes, and permissions for a specified tenant through the Tenant editor in Grid Manager if you have valid tenant permissions: All Tenants or per tenant object. Note that you cannot delegate the authority of any given tenants.
To view all tenant objects:

  1. From the Cloud tab, click the Tenants tab.
  2. Grid Manager displays the following information for each tenant:
  • Actions: Click the action icon (shown as a gear in each row) next to a selected tenant and choose from the following:
    • Edit: Modify certain general properties.
    • Extensible Attributes: Add or modify extensible attributes.
    • Permissions: Modify the administrative permissions.
  • Mgmt Platform: Displays the CMP that manages this tenant. When it displays Amazon, it indicates a successful validation of the Amazon account from NIOS to AWS.
  • Name: The tenant name.
  • ID: The unique tenant ID.
  • VMs: The total number of VM objects associated with this tenant. This can include the following object types: Host Record, Fixed Address, and any resource record type such as A, AAAA, PTR, and CNAME records. It also includes unmanaged IP addresses that are associated with the tenant.
  • Networks: The total number of IPv4 and IPv6 networks and network containers associated with this tenant.
    Note that this number includes only networks and network containers created by the cloud adapter.
  • Created: The timestamp when the tenant was first created. You cannot modify this field. This timestamp reflects the time when the tenant object was first seen by the Grid Master, so it may not match the timestamp when the original cloud API request was sent.
  • Last Updated: The timestamp when the last event associated with this tenant happened. You cannot modify this field. This timestamp reflects the time when the last event associated with this tenant was processed by the Cloud Platform Appliance, so it may not match the timestamp when the original cloud API request was sent.
  • Comment: Information about this tenant.
  • Network Views: The network view to which this tenant belongs.
  • Managed: Indicated whether this tenant is a managed or an unmanaged object in NIOS.
  • Site: The value entered for this predefined extensible attribute.

You can also select other cloud extensible attributes for display by clicking the down arrow next to any column header and selecting Columns -> Edit Columns.


Note: The vDiscovery for the OpenStack management platform discovers all tenants if the OpenStack user has the admin role in at least one tenant.


Viewing All VPCs (Virtual Private Clouds)

The VPCs tab displays all AWS VPCs . You can also manage selected VPCs, primarily for changing permissions, defining or changing extensible attributes, and changing the delegation settings for a VPC to a different NIOS Cloud member. An Amazon VPC is analogous to a network container in NIOS, and is hence represented as a network container with a special icon.
To view all VPCs:

  1. From the Cloud tab, click the VPCs tab.
  2. Grid Manager displays the following information for each VPC:
    • Actions: Click the action icon (shown as a gear in each row) next to a selected tenant and choose from the following:
      • Edit: Modify certain general properties.
      • Extensible Attributes: Add or modify extensible attributes.
      • Permissions: Modify the administrative permissions.
    • Mgmt Platform: Displays the CMP that manages the VPC. When it displays Amazon, it indicates a successful validation of the Amazon account from NIOS to AWS.
    • VPC Name: The AWS virtual private cloud name. The name is automatically defined by AWS. Each VPC name is a link that opens the Networks tab for the selected VPC. This page lists the individual private networks that exist within the VPC.
    • Networks: The number of individual private networks contained in the VPC.
    • VMs: The number of Amazon EC2 virtual machine instances currently discovered in the VPC. (You can run a vDiscovery in any VPC.) For information about how to start a vDiscovery, see Configuring vDiscovery Jobs.
    • Tenants: The number of cloud tenants associated with each VPC.
    • Cloud Usage: indicates whether the VPC is associated with any specific cloud extensible attributes or within a scope of delegation. It can be one of the following:
      • Cloud from adapter: Indicates that this object has been created by a cloud adapter and it may or may not be within a scope of delegation at the moment.
      • Cloud from delegation: Indicates that this object is within the scope of delegation or the object itself defines a scope of authority delegation, and it is not created by a cloud adapter.
      • Used by cloud: Indicates that this network or network container is associated with the extensible attribute Is External or Is Shared and the value is set to True, which implies the network is a private or shared network managed by the CMP, and it is not Cloud from adapter or Cloud from delegation.
      • Non-cloud: The object is a regular NIOS object and is not within the scope of any authority delegation nor is it associated with any of these extensible attributes: Cloud API Owned, Is External or Is Shared. NIOS admin users can modify this object based on their permissions.
    • Owned By: A cloud object can be owned by the Grid Master or the cloud adapter. When the object is created by the Grid Master, this shows Grid. If the object is created by the cloud adapter, this shows Cloud Adapter.
    • Delegated to: The NIOS Cloud appliance to which management of the AWS VPC is delegated. This field tells you whether or not a cloud object (in this case, a virtual private cloud) has been delegated to a Cloud Platform Appliance.
    • Network: The network IP. The network listed in this column for the VPC is also viewable from the main Data Management –> IPAM tab.
    • Site: Extensible Attribute listing the site information for the VPC.
    • Availability Zone: the Amazon availability zone in which the VPC resides.

You can also select other cloud extensible attributes for display by clicking the down arrow next to any column header and selecting Columns -> Edit Columns.

Viewing All Cloud Networks

The Networks tab displays all IPv4 and IPv6 networks and network containers from the CMP as well as all delegated networks. You can select a specific network or network container and modify its properties in the Cloud IPv4 Network or Cloud IPv6 Network editor.
To view all cloud networks and network containers:

  1. From the Cloud tab, click the Networks tab.
  2. Grid Manager displays the following information for each network and network container:
    • Actions: Click the action icon (shown as a gear in each row) next to a selected tenant and choose from the following:
      • Go to Tenant: Go to the Tenant tab to view associated tenant.
      • Go To DHCP Network Details: Go to the DHCP -> Networks tab to view associated details.
      • Go To IPAM Network Details: Go to the IPAM -> Networks tab to view associated details.
      • Go To Network View Details: Go to the IPAM -> Network View tab to view associated details.
      • Edit: Modify certain general properties.
      • Extensible Attributes: Add or modify extensible attributes.
      • Permissions: Modify the administrative permissions.
    • Mgmt Platform: Displays the CMP that manages the network. When it displays Amazon, it indicates a successful validation of the Amazon account from NIOS to AWS.
    • Network: The IP address and netmask of the network.
    • Tenant: The associated tenant for the network.
    • VPC Name: The name of the associated VPC in AWS.
    • Cloud Usage: This field indicates whether this object is associated with any specific cloud extensible attributes or within a scope of delegation. It can be one of the following:
      • Cloud from adapter: Indicates that this object has been created by a cloud adapter and it may or may not be within a scope of delegation at the moment.
      • Cloud from delegation: Indicates that this object is within the scope of delegation or the object itself defines a scope of authority delegation, and it is not created by a cloud adapter.
      • Used by cloud: Indicates that this network or network container is associated with the extensible attribute Is External or Is Shared and the value is set to True, which implies the network is a private or shared network managed by the CMP, and it is not Cloud from adapter or Cloud from delegation.
      • Non-cloud: The object is a regular NIOS object and is not within the scope of any authority delegation nor is it associated with any of these extensible attributes: Cloud API Owned, Is External or Is Shared. NIOS admin users can modify this object based on their permissions.
    • Owned By: A cloud object can be owned by the Grid Master or the cloud adapter. When the object is created by the Grid Master, this shows Grid. If the object is created by the cloud adapter, this shows Adapter.
    • Delegated To: This tells you whether a cloud object has been delegated to a Cloud Platform Appliance or not. If the cloud object has a parent object and the parent has been delegated, this field shows the parent delegation and you cannot modify the field.
  • Network View: The network view to which this network belongs.
  • Active Users: Displays the number of active users on the selected network.
  • Site: The value entered for this predefined extensible attribute.

You can also select other cloud extensible attributes for display by clicking the down arrow next to any column header and selecting Columns -> Edit Columns.

Viewing All Cloud VMs

The VMs tab lists all cloud VMs by IP addresses. A VM object is an abstract object representing a virtual machine that is running on the CMP. A VM belongs to one and only one tenant. However, the same VM may have more than one IP addresses (including unmanaged IP addresses) associated with it. Each VM may have an IP address that is part of an overlapping private IP address space and one or more IP addresses in the shared or external networks.
A VM object in NIOS can be a collection of supported object types that have the same value for the extensible attribute VM ID. Only the following NIOS object types are considered as existing VMs when they are tagged with the VM ID attribute: Host Record, A Record, AAAA Record, and PTR Record, and Fixed Address. A VM object may be defined by objects from different network views, and it can have more than one IP addresses associated with it.

Note: Since a VM can be defined by objects from different network views, the same IP address may appear multiple times if it has been defined in more than one network view. A VM object is a read-only abstract object, therefore you cannot create, modify, or delete it.

After a vDiscovery job is completed, the appliance displays discovered data for each VM in this tab. Available data is displayed based on the vDiscovery configuration and your CMP. For example, if your CMP is AWS, discovered data can include the VPC to which the VM belongs. You can click a VM name and drill down to the Networks and IP Addresses sub tabs to view networks and IP addresses associated with the selected VM. For more information about vDiscovery, see Configuring vDiscovery Jobs.
Note that in addition to managing discovered data through Grid Manager, you can clear any managed or unmanaged discovered data, or clear all discovery data related to a vDiscovery job through a cloud API request. You can use this feature to properly identify VMs that you spin up or de-provision through a cloud adapter. For example, when you use Infoblox IPAM Plug-In for VMware as the cloud adapter to de-provision a VM, you can send a cloud API call to remove the discovered data for this VM so you can avoid IP address conflict with IP addresses manually allocated by the VMware vCenter. For information about cloud API requests, see About Cloud API Requests.
In the VMs tab, discovered VMs are highlighted in different background colors, as follows:

  • Yellow: Unmanaged VMs that do not have associated NIOS objects.
  • White: Discovered VMs that have at least one associated NIOS object and there is no conflicting information between the discovered data and the NIOS data.
  • Red: Discovered VMs that have at least one associated NIOS object and there is conflicting information between the discovered data and the NIOS data. Depending on the nature of the conflict, you can resolve them as described in Resolving Conflicting Addresses . You may also be able to convert or clear unmanaged data, as described in Managing Unmanaged Data.

To view all VM objects in NIOS:

  1. From the Cloud tab, click the VMs tab.
  2. Grid Manager displays the following information for all cloud VM by IP address:
    • Actions: Click the action icon (shown as a gear in each row) next to a selected tenant and select the action you want to perform.
    • Mgmt Platform: Displays the CMP to which this tenant belongs. This can be Amazon, OpenStack, or VMware.
    • VM Name: The name of the VM.
    • VM ID: The unique tenant ID to which this VM belongs.
    • Networks: The number of networks that belong to this VM.
    • IP Address: The IP address of the VM.
    • VM VPC: The VPC to which this VM belongs.
    • VM Tenant: The tenant to which this VM belongs.
    • Port ID: The port ID for the VM.
    • Network View: The network view to which this VM belongs.
    • Active Users: The number of active users on the selected network.
    • FQDN: The FQDN of the VM.
    • VM Last Updated: The timestamp when the VM data was last updated.
    • First Discovered: The timestamp when the VM was first discovered.
    • Last Discovered: The timestamp when the VM was last discovered.
    • Task Name: The name of the task that collected the discovered data. It is usually the ID or task name that collected the discovered data.
    • Comment: Information about the VM.

Depending on you CMP, you can also select additional discovered fields to be displayed in the VMs tab by clicking the down arrow next to any column header and selecting Columns -> Edit Columns. Note that some of these fields contain discovered data that is only relevant to your CMP.

Viewing All Cloud Platform Members

The Members tab displays all members that are currently running the cloud API service. To view all cloud members in NIOS:

  1. From the Cloud tab, click the Members tab.
  2. Grid Manager displays the following information for each member:
    • Actions: Click the action icon (shown as a gear in each row) next to a selected tenant and select the action you want to perform.
    • Name: The member name.
    • Status: The current status of this member.
    • Comment: Information about this cloud member.
    • Site: The value entered for this predefined extensible attribute.

Select other cloud extensible attributes for display by clicking the down arrow next to any column header and selecting Columns -> Edit Columns.