A couple more suggestions to improve the experience of using NetEdit..
1. SSL Certificate for the web needs to be easily importable. We use a wildcard cert and while I will go to the cli and install it (as soon as I find the guide again), it would be nice to have it in the GUI.
2. The layout of the web elements need to stay put when I make changes. Every time I log in, I press the hamburger on the top left to open the list of words, because I don't know what those icons mean. A wrench and a cogwheel could both be settings. When I click Devices, the list of devices has columns that I pull around so I can see the "Name" of the device and so that I can see all of the Serial Number and Mac Address, because by default, they are too narrow to show those. Now, there's a ton of room in the "Current Firmware" column, and the Managed/Status/NAE columns.. But Name/Mac/Serial are too short. (Yes - I know, when I shrink back the hamburger 'Menu', they get right sized, but why don't they right size when I pop that out).
3. Discover Devices. So this is a cool feature, but it seems either broken or not quite done yet.
a. When I want to add a single switch, I choose the subnet /32, but it still forces me to enter a Seed Address. ??
b. When the scan is done, where is the notification that it's good to go? Where's the notification that it didn't find anything? I accidentally found it in the logs, but it can get lost. Should be some sort of button to show me the log filtered to discoveries or something to show me what happened.
c. Show me the link to "Managed Subnets" when I'm in devices so I can see where a "managed subnet" has already located a device. Here's a log line "
Device '10.91.0.56' not discovered since corresponding MAC address 64e881-xxxxxx is already associated with device '10.99.1.71'. But I didn't initiate any scan on 10.91.xx.xx, why did that message show up? How do I find if the switch I'm trying to add as say 10.99.1.11 is already listed somewhere else - because I can't get it to show up?
d. Re: Managed Subnets, when I'm in the Discover Devices interface, I can see the list of managed subnets, but I can't edit them, and there's no easy way to know where to go and edit them (from that screen). Would be nice to have a button - 'edit managed subnets' to take me there.
e. Multi-edit - I have several 'managed subnets' for example, that are old and I need to remove, but I have to do it one click at a time. click. minus. click. minus.
<tangent> [because I can't use the management port on access switches, since fiber to our buildings doesn't really allow data/mgmt split for access, so I have to set up management on data plane, but using DHCP to connect initially is super handy - so I have to use a different subnet because it won't let me set a static address when there's already a DHCP even though it's a different VRF?, so I have to put them in on a different network, discover them in NetEdit, and add the config, then change the device to the corrected vlan after the ports are configured.</tangent>
If someone knows some ways I should be doing something different, I'm open to hear it.
Thanks!------------------------------
Phillip Horn
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Original Message:
Sent: Nov 23, 2020 02:13 PM
From: Phillip Horn
Subject: Netedit Improvement?
Hey,
We're trying to get NetEdit up and going, but there are a couple of things that are bugging me.
1. Authentication
How can a product that's release version 2.0 exist without at least some sort of RADIUS/TACACS+/LDAP authentication method? I'd venture a guess that every company implementing NE as a solution have systems in for auth, and having to create and manage users, or worse - sharing admin user access is not going to work for very long.
2. User timeout
Why can't I set the timeout length in the GUI and have that stay put when I do an update? A 20 minute timeout for user auth is way too short for me, especially while I'm working to get things configured while I also go about the daily tasks of supporting our users. I log in to this thing dozens of times per day because I get interrupted and have to work on other things.
3. UI consistency
There's an Action menu throughout. Sometimes, there are actions that can be performed, and sometimes it's just a worthless button on the page.
Firmware repository:
Diagnostics:
Settings-Attributes:
Plans:
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Phillip Horn
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