Connecting the Portal to the Engines

Overview

For the Portal to compute and display data in its widgets, connect it to the Engines that receive and organize the end-user data coming from the Collectors.

Starting from V6.17, federate your Appliances before connecting the Portal to the Engines and distributing the number of licensed devices among Engines. Otherwise the Portal will be unable to fully communicate with the Engines because of Appliance hardening.

Adding a new Engine

To connect the Portal to an Engine:

1. Log in to the Portal as central administrator.

2. In the top menu ADMINISTRATION, select the Engines dashboard under the section SYSTEM CONFIGURATION.

3. Click the plus sign that is located in the top right corner of the widget Engines Management. The dialog to add a new Engine shows up.

4. Type in the IP address or DNS name of the appliance that hosts the Engine in the Address (IP or hostname) field.

5. In the Port field, type in the port number that the Engine uses to communicate with the Finder and the Portal.

6. Optional: In the field Description, write down a brief sentence to help you distinguish the new Engine that you want to connect to the Portal from other Engines.

7. Click Ok.

After completing the procedure, the Engines dashboard displays the new Engine as a row in the table of connected Engines. The row displays the name, address, description, version and timezone of the Engine. However, since the connection is not yet established, a red dot appears in the first column of the row and the actual name, version and timezone of the Engine are not available yet.

Establishing the connection

To establish the connection and get information from the Engine:

1. In the table of Engines find the chain and pencil icons that are placed to the right of the Name column.

2. Click on the chain icon to establish the connection with the Engine. The red dot turns to yellow and then to green, to indicate that the connection is now established. The widget fills in the name, version and timezone of the Engine with the information that the Engine itself sends.

Repeat the operation described above for any other Engine that you want to connect to the Portal.

Once the connection is established, the Portal collects information from the Engine in a regular basis. While the Engine connection is working, you cannot edit the parameters of the Engine and so the pencil icon in the row that holds the information about the Engine is disabled. Otherwise, if the Portal cannot establish a connection to the Engine, the dot in the beginning of the row stays red, which means that you probably did not set the parameters of the Engine correctly. In this case, click the pencil icon, edit the connection parameters of the Engine as explained above and try to establish the connection again by clicking the chain icon.

Similarly, if the appliance of an Engine changes its configuration and the modifications make the connection with the Portal fail, the dot will turn to red as well. To recover the connection:

1. Click the chain icon (displayed as a broken chain now) to unlink the Engine from the Portal and be able to edit the modified parameters.

2. Edit the parameters of the Engine as we just explained above.

3. Click again the chain icon and wait for the red dot to turn to green.

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RELATED TASK

• Federating your Appliances

RELATED REFERENCE

• Appliance hardening