Maintenance

This page serves as a guidepost for the maintenance of your appliance. It provides tools for configuration management, log retrieval, database maintenance, and power control.

SQL database maintenance

The device is running an SQL database, which is used by many Flowmon modules. This database is reordered in a regular manner to achieve its fast response. In some cases, when a huge amount of records are stored in the database in a short time (for example, when restoring from a backup), the regular reordering process is not enough to keep all the SQL records in an optimal status. If the response of the Flowmon modules that use the SQL database is getting slower as a result of unordered data, it is necessary to perform a full reorder process. This process needs exclusive access to the database, and therefore locks it for writing. For this reason, some Flowmon modules could not work properly; wait until the reorder process is finished. To run the full reorder process, click Reorder database.

Appliance logs

Logs contain service information. If there are system faults or the system is not behaving properly, download and submit a support request at https://support.flowmon.com.

In Distributed Architecture, there is a 2-hour timeout for downloading logs. If logs are not completely transferred to the Top Priority Master within this time, only the transferred ones are downloaded.

Configuration file

The configuration file can be stored as an XML file. This file can be used as a backup if the configuration is lost or for distributing the configuration to other devices. Click Download to display a form for the selection of the configuration groups to store. After applying this form, the XML file with the configuration is generated and the browser asks you to store it on your computer.

To restore the previously saved configuration, click Upload. In the dialog box, select the XML file with the configuration. After the upload, the form is shown where you can select which configuration groups stored in the XML you want to apply. For the configuration import, only values that are understandable for the target device are applied. In Additional Settings, you can select the import mode. The mode Add and modify is non-destructive and only adds those elements which are not present in the target system and are present in the XML file (for example, Profiles). Elements that are already present in the target system are modified only according to the settings in the XML file; the captured are not modified. Elements that are present in the target system and are not present in XML are left untouched. On the other hand, the mode Delete and create is destructive and causes, for example, wiping of captured data in profiles (if the configuration group Profiles is selected). This mode completely removes all elements which are not present in the imported XML file.

Forward compatibility of exported configuration is guaranteed throughout all releases with the same major version number. Between major versions, the last stable release of the previous major version is guaranteed to export a configuration that is compatible with the next major version. For example, For Flowmon 11 releases - configuration export from any 11.0.x release is compatible with any 11.1.y release. For upgrades between major versions - if 10.3.9 is the last version released for Flowmon 10 then the configuration exported from this version is compatible with Flowmon 11 and can be imported.

The import process can take even several minutes depending on the selected configuration groups. Once the import is finished, the status window is shown with the result of the import of each selected configuration group.

When importing configuration file with users, a warning message may appear that some user's password might have been changed. For security reasons, we are unable to distinguish wheter the password has actually changed or not.

System power control

Use these options to remotely reboot or shut down your device. To restart the device, press the Reboot button and confirm your action. To bring the device down in a secure way, press the Shutdown button and confirm your action. Note that the device cannot be remotely powered on.

Product usage data collection

Options in this section control interactive, in-product user guides, and usage data collection. These two features are linked and can only be enabled/disabled together. Use the slider to turn features on/off and click Save to apply the change. Both are enabled by default on all appliances and require the client's connectivity to the public Internet to communicate with external servers that provide guide content and collect usage data.

Interactive, in-product guides provide a brief description of key features of the product along with useful advice on how to use them correctly. Each guide tied to a specific section of the UI is displayed only once to every user. Once a guide has been displayed to a user, it will not be shown again. The display status of all guides, for all users, can be reset by the appliance administrator by using the CLI-based factory reset tool and choosing ONLY the Do you want to reset interactive guides? option. Initially, guides will cover key features in the Configuration Center. New guides will be added over time.

To improve the product, product usage data collection collects solely non-personally identifiable data about the appliance configuration; including usage statistics, enabled features, and general configuration. It does NOT collect customer data stored on or processed by Flowmon appliances. To display and review collected data, click Show collected data.

When enabled, this feature sends collected data to external servers using a secure communication channel.