All of you must have already heard about Cisco ASA now supporting NetFlow export through a flow format called NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL ). This now provides users the ability to do almost real time traffic analysis and bandwidth monitoring on their firewall devices too. NetFlow support from ASA received very excellent responses from users because of which we at NetFlow Analyzer started support for not just plain ASA NetFlow reports but also for NATed information available in the ASA NetFlow packets.

With NetFlow support, I am sure a number of users out there will like to know the best and easiest way to configure ASA for NetFlow export. Check out the steps below to configure NetFlow export on ASA via ASDM:

Configuring Flow Collector:

In ASDM, under Configuration go to Device Management > Logging > NetFlow

Here, you can set the NetFlow Analyzer server IP address, the ASA interface through which NetFlow packets are to be exported and the NetFlow listener port (By default it is 9996). When you choose the interface, select the interface which connects to the server where NetFlow Analyzer is installed. You can also set the template packet send frequency and disable syslogs that are redundant after the NetFlow information extraction.

Set the template time out rate as 1 minute and delay transmission of flow creation events for short-lived flows to be 60 seconds.

Then click on Apply to write the commands on ASA.

Configuring NetFlow information extraction:

To enable the ASA to start sending information to the NetFlow Analyzer defined above you need to go to Firewall > Service Policy Rules.

Then you need to create a new service policy that needs to be applied GLOBALLY.

And then define the collector that statistics for this traffic will be sent to (was defined initially).

Once the service policy is created click on Apply to write the commands on ASA.

To configure Cisco ASA through CLI click here .

Once the configuration is complete, NetFlow data will be exported and you will start seeing results in NetFlow Analyzer.

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Regards,
Praveen Kumar

Greetings from ManageEngine Desktop Central

We are happy to announce the availability of latest hotfix to Desktop Central 7 - Build 70117. Here's the complete list of enhancements & bug fixes from the previous hotfix:

Enhancements & Bug Fixes

Enhancements

1. Hardware details of CDROM Drive, USB Controller and USB Hub will now have an additional column indicating the reason for the hardware error, if any.
2. Option to grant/revoke remote access to the database used by Desktop Central for users to retrieve the data for reporting purposes has been included.
3. Patch engine has been optimised for large networks.

Bug Fixes

1. Distribution Server patch replication issue has been fixed.
2. Issue in performing double-click actions twice on the Remote Computer when using Java Viewer has been fixed.
3. Num Lock key issue on the Remote Computer when accessing it using the Activex viewer has been fixed.

You can download the hotfix and install as per the instructions provided there.

To download complete product, which includes these enhancements, visit our website.

Patch Engine Optimized to Improve Performance

The Patch Engine of Desktop Central has been optimized to improve the performance by reducing the CPU usage. This will considerably reduce the load on the Server, which can be used to run any additional applications.

What's Cooking?

The features in our roadmap that are currently under development include:

• Approval Mechanism for Automatic Uninstallation of Prohibited Software Details>>
• Automating Software Deployment Details>>
• Active Directory Authentication - Logging into Desktop Central client will be authenticated via Windows Active Directory

Add Requirements to Product Roadmap

You can add your new feature requirements on Desktop Management to our roadmap. We will prioritize and include them in our subsequent updates. Visit our Roadmap and add your requirements.

It's the weekend that hosts the best football played in the past four years - Germany takes on Uruguay for 3rd play-offs and Spain fights Netherlands for the grand World Football Champions title. Octopus Paul who's been on a 100% success rate in his predictions so far at FIFA 2010, says that Germany and Spain win in their respective games. And having seen these four teams play I too think it's Spain-Netherlands-Germany-Uruguay placed 1-2-3-4. So Paul will remain 100% successful in his predictions this worldcup?!!

What if you had magical, psychic Octopus Paul solving IT failures for you? Check out what we think at http://www.manageengine.com/network-monitoring/ .. After the football weekend, after you've cooled off, do the latest OpManager 8.7 and make yourself magical & psychic with IT!

Get the beers & chips in stock and have a great football weekend folks!



 

It is often said: “Change is the enemy of network availability”.  Human errors on network device configuration often lead to network outages spoiling business continuity. Aside, highly skilled network administrators often spend all their time on manually managing the configurations and changes. Typically, repetitive tasks such as modifying VLAN settings, changing access control lists, rotating passwords, firmware upgrades and the like eat away the time and efforts of administrators. They get little time to concentrate on real network administration - ensuring security and reliability, compliance to best practices and IT regulations, optimizing performance, capacity and utilization of the network.

ManageEngine DeviceExpert helps you automate and simplify the entire life cycle of Network Change & Configuration Management (NCCM). DeviceExpert significantly saves your time, cost and resources, reduces the risk of errors and network downtime and thereby improves efficiency and productivity. DeviceExpert also integrates with OpManager. Try DeviceExpert / OpManager NCM Plug-in now!

Bala
ManageEngine DeviceExeprt

You must be already aware of Release 9.2 of Applications Manager with VMWare Monitoring , Memcached Monitoring and PostgreSQL Monitoring .

Another silent enhancement we made in the previous release in addition to the popular anomaly detection and enhanced alarm management capabilities is the ability to take action on the search results.

We observed many of our customers with large number of monitors preferred to use the older search to reach the monitor. Now we decided to allow them to even take some action on the search results.

Now you can search for a keyword like "server" or "mysql" etc and you can take action on the results. The results show up with the Bulk Edit view that makes it easier to take action.




Some of the actions you can perform in bulk on the search results are updating display names, poll intervals, Manage/ UnManage, updating passwords, IP Address etc.

If there is something that you think will make life easy for you while using Applications Manager, do post your comments or vote your idea up, via our community portal.

Gibu

ManageEngine Applications Manager
Application Performance Monitoring Tool