This section looks briefly at the Administration and
Monitoring features of the Cisco VPN 3000 Concentrator Series.
Administration
The VPN 3000 Concentrator Series provides a rich set of
administration tools and features that keep the system operational and secure.
Configuring the system sets the parameters that govern its use and functionality
as a VPN device, but administration involves higher-level activities, such as
who is allowed to configure the system and what software runs on it. Only those
logged in as administrators can access and use the Administration tools. Figure
14-48 shows a breakdown of the Administration menu.
Earlier sections in this chapter looked at some of the
Administration features, such as managing Concentrator access hours and digital
certificates. This section briefly discusses some other features that might be
useful in a remote access environment.
Summarizing VPN Activity
The VPN 3000 Concentrator Series provides a recap of the
current sessions currently underway by using two similar screens, the
Administration | Administer Sessions screen option and the Monitoring | Sessions
screen. Figure 14-49 shows the Administration | Administer
Sessions screen.
Both screens have the Group drop-down box that allows looking at
only a single group. Both screens have two additional outputs rows, which are
not shown in the previous figure. One is a detail view of the current Remote
Access sessions and the other is a detail view of the current administrative
sessions.
The primary difference between the views is this: the
Administration | Administer Sessions screen has links, just below the Group
drop-down box, which can be used to log out of all active sessions of a given
tunnel type at once. This could be handy if new security parameters were
configured and you decide to force all current sessions to comply, instead of
waiting for the next session.
To log out of the sessions, click the appropriate label. The
Manager displays a prompt to confirm the action. This action immediately
terminates all sessions of the given tunnel type. No user warning or Undo option
occurs.
Ping
The Administration | Ping screen, shown in Figure
14-50, lets you use the ICMP ping utility to test network connectivity. This
is most useful when working with and troubleshooting remote user connections.
The VPN Concentrator sends an ICMP Echo Request message to the defined host. If
the host is reachable, the screen displays a simple IP address is alive message,
such as 192.168.1.20 is alive. If the host is unreachable,
the Manager displays an Error message. You can also ping hosts from the
Administration | Administer Sessions screen.
System Rebooting
The Administration | System Reboot screen, as shown in Figure
14-51, allows the administrator to reboot or shut down the VPN Concentrator
with various options. Rebooting the system automatically logs you out and
displays the main login screen. If the browser appears to hang during a reboot,
preventing you from logging in, wait a minute for the reboot to finish.
The choices should be self-explanatory.
Software Update
The Administration | Software Update screen has only two
links that allow the administrator to update either the VPN Concentrator
executable system software or the VPN Client software. The two links are as
follows:
Clicking the Concentrator link brings up the Administration |
Software Update | Concentrator screen, as shown in Figure 14-52. The process
uploads the executable system software to the VPN Concentrator, which then
verifies the integrity of the software image.
To specify the new software file, enter the complete path name of
the new image file or click the Browse... button to find and select the file
from the workstation or network.
This process can take a few minutes to upload and verify the
software. The system will display a simple progress bar.
You must reboot the VPN Concentrator to run the new software
image. The system prompts you to reboot when the update is finished.
Updating the Client software is covered in Chapter 15.
Monitoring
The VPN 3000 Concentrator compiles many statistics, and it
tracks the status of many processes and activities essential to system
administration and management. The Monitoring windows can be used to view the
status items and statistics. You can see the state of LEDs that show the status
of hardware subsystems in the device. Figure 14-53 shows a breakdown
of the Monitoring menu.
The Monitor menu option provides opportunities to see snapshot
summaries of activity broken down by protocol or encryption type. An option,
Monitoring | Sessions | Top Ten Lists, shows statistics for the top ten
currently active sessions, sorted by the following:
-
Data—total bytes transmitted and received
-
Duration—total time connected
-
Throughput—average throughput (bytes/sec)
Routing Table
The Monitoring | Routing Table screen displays the current
VPN Concentrator routing table. As with the routers, the routing table shows the
best valid forwarding paths the system knows about. These routes can be static
routes, or learned via routing protocols or interface configurations. Figure
14-54 shows a simple route table with related information.
Sections
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