Appliances

 

Contents

Managing Appliances in ETM Dashboard

ETM Dashboard is a cloud-based service for managing your Edge Threat Management appliances. For example, you can perform the following appliance management tasks using ETM Dashboard:

  • See the status of all your deployments in a single dashboard view.
  • Remotely connect to your appliances without logging in.
  • Push shared configuration profiles to multiple appliances.
  • Backup and restore configuration.
  • Apply or transfer a license subscription.
  • Set up notifications to your email, Arista Go mobile app, Slack, PagerDuty, or VictorOps accounts
  • Review consolidated alerts and reports.


Requirements:

To use ETM Dashboard with your Edge Threat Management deployments you must meet the following requirements:

  • NG Firewall version 12.2 or higher. There is no minimum version of Micro Edge required to connect to ETM Dashboard.
  • Registered account in ETM Dashboard. You can create an account here.
  • Connect to ETM Dashboard option in NG Firewall must be enabled. You can find this option in Config > System > Support.

ETM Dashboard is a free service. However, for full functionality your appliance must be assigned a subscription. Features that require an appliance subscription include Policies, Alerts, Reports, and Networks.

Adding an Appliance to your ETM Dashboard Account

You can add both NG Firewall and Micro Edge appliances to ETM Dashboard: Adding Edge Threat Management appliances to ETM Dashboard.

Adding Edge Threat Management appliances to ETM Dashboard

You can remotely manage and access your NG Firewall and Micro Edge appliances by adding them to your ETM Dashboard account. If the appliance is online but not configured, you can add the appliance based on its serial number by a process referred to as Zero Touch Provisioning. Alternatively if you do not know the serial number, you can add the appliance by its UID.

Upgrading Appliances via ETM Dashboard

ETM Dashboard enables the admin to upgrade multiple appliances simultaneously, without the need to connect to each individual one. You can also configure schedules for automatic upgrades in ETM Dashboard.

Upgrading Multiple Appliances

  1. Go to the Appliances page. The Appliances grid displays the software version of each device.
  2. Click the blue Update Software button at the top of the list.
  3. The list of appliances is filtered to only include those which are able to upgrade.
  4. Select the appliances you wish to upgrade and click the Update button.

The update process is initiated for all selected appliances.

Configuring Scheduled Automatic Upgrades

  1. Go to Appliances and select the appliance on which to set the schedule policy.
  2. Click the Update Software button.

    In the menu that pops up, select the day and time when you want the appliance to be updated.

  3. Click Set Schedule to apply the schedule.

Assigning a Location to Appliances in ETM Dashboard

The ETM Dashboard and Appliance details screens display a map to show you the geographic location of your appliances. This is useful to help you identify which appliance you want to manage, or to see from a single view where all of your appliances are geographically located. ETM Dashboard uses IP-based geolocation technology to estimate the location of your appliances. If you prefer to define a precise address, you can assign it in the appliance details.

Updating an Appliance Location

In the Appliances view, select an appliance to view the current assigned location data. The appliance location appears in the Appliance Map widget.


To update the location of your appliance or network:
  1. Click Edit.
  2. Enter the new address.
  3. Click Save.

Managing Backup Configurations in ETM Dashboard

ETM Dashboard enables you to automatically backup configuration data from appliances connected to your account. After an appliance performs at least one backup to ETM Dashboard, you can use the backup file as a Configuration Template, or you can restore it to the source appliance or any other appliance connected to this account.


Requirements

This functionality requires the Configuration Backup app for NG Firewall.

This feature operates automatically in Micro Edge: no special settings or configurations are required.

Notes Regarding Restoring Backups

A backup file can only be restored to the same version it was drawn from or one version newer. For example, an NG Firewall backup taken on 16.5 can be restored to 16.5 or 16.6. A backup taken on Micro Edge 4.2 can be restored to 4.2 or 4.3.

Backup files are not "backwards compatible", meaning that a backup file cannot be used on an older version of the software than the one it was taken on. For example, NG Firewall 16.5 cannot be restored to an NG Firewall running version 16.4 or older.

NG Firewall backups can only be restored to NG Firewall. Micro Edge backups can only be restored to Micro Edge.

Restoring a Configuration Backup to the Source Appliance

This option is used when you wish to restore an appliance using its own backup config settings.

  1. Go to the Appliances heading along the left-hand side of the page and select the Appliances tab.
  2. Select the appliance from the appliances list.
  3. Find the Cloud Backups Widget.
  4. Select a backup file by date and click Restore Backup.
  5. Click Yes to confirm.

Restoring a backup to a different appliance

This option is useful when upgrading or replacing hardware or after a reinstall of the appliance.

It can also be used to push common configurations that you would like shared amongst multiple appliances.
  1. Go to the Appliances heading along the left-hand side of the page and select the Backups tab.
  2. Select the backup configuration you would like to restore. The UID and Label columns identify the NG Firewall these settings were taken from.
  3. Click the Restore Backup button.
  4. The Restore Backup menu opens, displaying all eligible NG Firewall appliances in your account. Select one or more appliances to push the config to and click Restore Backup.
  5. A confirmation menu opens, displaying the backup file you have chosen and the appliances you will restore to. Verify your selections and click Confirm Restore to initiate the backup.

Creating a Backup File Manually

Click the Create Backup button in the Cloud Backups widget on the Appliances page to force an immediate backup of the selected appliance.

Downloading a Backup File

You can download a copy of the backup settings file to your local computer in two ways:
  • From the Cloud Backups widget on the Appliances page, click the link in the Name column.
  • From the Backups page, click the Download button at the right-hand side of the page.

Labeling Appliances in ETM Dashboard

You can assign a label to appliances in ETM Dashboard to help you identify them in a list. By default, the appliance displays its hostname first, then its label. In the screenshot below, the label is Demo: z4, in grey.


To Assign a Label:

  1. Click the Appliances option in the top bar.
  2. Select the appliance from the list.
  3. Click the Set Labelbutton.
  4. Enter your label and click Save.
Note: A label is required when adding new appliances to ETM Dashboard.

How to Remove an Appliance from ETM Dashboard

In some situations, you may need to remove an appliance from your ETM Dashboard account. For example, you want to move your appliance to another account or you reinstalled NG Firewall and the appliance has a new UID.

Important: removing an appliance from ETM Dashboard will permanently delete any cloud backups for that appliance.

If the appliance was part of an SD-Network, it is also removed from that network. However, tunnel configurations created on the appliance will remain and should be removed manually.

Removing an Appliance

To remove an appliance from your account:

  1. Navigate to Appliances.
  2. Select the appliance to be removed.
  3. Click the Remove Appliance button.
  4. Confirm that you want to remove the appliance from your account.