Vendor-Specific Requirements for Virtual Device Discovery

NetMRI discovers Cisco-based virtual device contexts through the Cisco command-line interface. Telnet and/or SSH access must be enabled on the Virtual Host, and the credentials for the contexts must be known to NetMRI.

NetMRI discovers Juniper-based virtual device contexts through SNMP. Juniper's term for virtual routers/switches is Logical System. For uniformity, NetMRI labels all Juniper-based Logical Systems as Virtual Devices. SNMP must be enabled on the Juniper virtual host and access granted for the NetMRI appliance to all virtual devices/Logical Systems.

A Juniper command sequence illustrates how to enable the Juniper device's SNMP access using a community string snmppub on a virtual device/Logical System named M5VdcTest1:

community @snmppub {

   authorization read-only; 
   routing-instance M5VdcTest1/default {

     clients { 
        0.0.0.0/0; 
     } 
     } 
} 
routing-instance-access {

   access-list { 
     *; 
   } 
}

In all cases, the Juniper Virtual Host (i.e. the device hosting the virtual instances) acts as a proxy to the virtual devices for all SNMP communication. Direct SNMP access to Juniper Virtual Devices is not permitted. This is largely transparent in NetMRI. If connectivity to the Virtual Host is lost, SNMP collection of the Virtual Devices is not possible and the VDCs will appear on the Devices Not Present page.

Both the virtual hosts and their virtual devices must be discovered by NetMRI as independent network devices before it will identify them as Virtual Hosts and Virtual Devices.

You may see a specific report Issue type during the discovery of virtual hosts and virtual devices. The issue will usually appear as unknown community string. This may report against Cisco devices for which VDC discovery is CLI-only. Should this issue appear, you can repress it for further VDC discovery procedures. See the Performing Issue Suppression topic for more information. Other Issues that may appear during indirect discovery include Down Device and Config Bad Password. These issues may need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis or maybe repressed as needed once it becomes clear that the virtual devices can be successfully managed after discovery.