Managing the URT Servers

These sections describe the tasks involved in ensuring that the URT servers run smoothly and reliably. All user logons to NT domains or NDS directories pass through these servers, so they must run correctly for successful logons. The URT servers also act as VMPS servers for the switches on the network.

Backing Up and Recovering the URT Database

URT automatically maintains a backup of VLAN associations. If the ANI server becomes corrupted, URT automatically restores the most recent backup of your VLAN associations. You do not have to directly recover this data.

However, if the machine on which URT is running crashes, or there is some other disk error or data loss, you must recover the URT backup in order for URT to perform the automatic recovery.

If you do a full-system restore, the URT backup is restored along with your other files.

If you are only backing up selected files, you must select the URT backup file (urt.dat.bak) during restore.

Starting, Stopping, or Disabling a URT Server

By default, URT servers start automatically when you boot the Windows NT machine. If you are moving a server, or troubleshooting or doing other diagnosis, you can stop or disable the URT server.

Procedure

To stop the service, select it and click Stop.
To start the service, select it and click Start.
To change how the service is started, select it and click Startup. In the resulting window, select how you want to start the service (Automatic or Manual), or disable the service.

Tips

The URT service appears as urtservice.exe on the NT Task Manager's Processes tab. Other related processes are osagent.exe, urtsvc.exe.

Related Topics

Removing a URT Server

Before you remove a URT server, you should reconfigure VMPS on the switches, and reinstall the URT logon script, to ensure that clients do not try to use the removed server.

Procedure

You can determine which switches use a URT server by selecting the server in URT. The switches are shown in the VMPS Clients list.

Step 2

Click the Save to Database button, or select File>Save to Database, to save your changes.

Step 4 In URT, make sure the uninstalled server is not listed in the URT Servers folder. If it is, select the URT Servers folder and select View>Refresh (if this does not remove the URT server, wait 5 minutes and refresh the view again).

Step 5

Click the Install URT Script button, or select Configure>Install URT Script, to reinstall the URT script on the NT domain controllers and NetWare servers.

Reinstalling the script ensures that the URT client service is aware that you removed the URT server.

Tips

You can use the switch's commands to change the VMPS configuration on the switch if you prefer that to using the URT management interface.
The URT server remains in the folder view with a red X through the icon until you restart ANI. The presence of the server in the list does not affect your URT performance.

Moving a URT Server

If you change the IP address of the machine that hosts a URT server, you are moving the server, even if you do not change the physical machine. If you move a URT server, you must reconfigure VMPS on all the switches that use the server as a VMPS server.

Procedure

Step 2 Remove the old URT server. See "Removing a URT Server" for the required steps. However, if the server moved only because you changed the IP address of the URT server's machine, do not uninstall the URT server. Instead, only change the VMPS configuration on the switches that use the URT server's old IP address.

Viewing and Configuring URT Server Characteristics

The URT servers are listed in the URT folder pane (left-hand pane) by IP address. You can view more detailed information about these servers or change some configuration settings.

Procedure

Double-click the IP address of the URT server in the folder pane. A window appears with the information described in Table 5-1.

Table 5-1 URT Server Options Window

Field	Description
UDP Port	The UDP port that the server uses. To change this port, you must reinstall the server.
Up Since	The last date the URT server was restarted.
NT Computer Name	The NT name of the machine on which the server is installed.
Enable MAC-Based VLANs	Select if you want to use MAC-based VLAN associations (created with the UserTracking application) in addition to the associations created in URT. Use the Update MAC to VLAN Mappings command to add MAC-based mappings to the URT server VMPS tables.
Enable Trace	Select to have the URT server keep a log of events for the server. This can help you and Cisco Technical Support diagnosis URT problems. We recommend that you only turn tracing on to diagnose specific problems, because tracing reduces the performance of the URT server. See "Gathering Log Information for Cisco Technical Support" in Chapter 7 for more information.
Log-File Name	Enter the name of the log file for tracing. This file is only created if you enable tracing.

Tips

When you select a URT server, the URT list pane (right-hand pane) shows the switches that use this server as a VMPS server, whether the switch uses the URT server as a primary or secondary VMPS server, and whether the switch is actively using the server for VMPS.

Configuring the Switches to Use the URT Server as the VMPS Server

In order for URT to put a user into the VLAN you designate, the switch to which the user's machine is attached must be configured to use the URT server as a VMPS server. Switches use the VLAN Membership Policy Server (VMPS) to obtain information about VLANs and the users and machines assigned to the VLANs.

Configuring the switches to use the URT server is a one-time event. However, you must configure a switch whenever:

You add a new switch to the network (you only have to configure the new switch)
You add a URT server (you must add the URT server as a primary or secondary VMPS server to the VMPS configuration of all the switches that you want to use the new URT server)
You remove a URT server (you must remove the URT server from the VMPS configuration of all switches that use it)
You move a URT server (you must change the IP address in the VMPS configuration of all switches that use the server).

Before You Begin

Do an ANI discovery in CWSI Campus. This discovery ensures that all switches in your network are reflected in ANI, which is required for them to appear in URT.

Procedure

Step 3

Click the Configure VMPS on Switch button, or select Configure>Configure VMPS.

Step 4 In the VMPS Configuration Dialog, enter IP addresses for the first, second, and third VMPS server, and select whether the switch should use the server as a Primary or Secondary server.

Step 5 Click Set VMPS on Switches in the VMPS Configuration Dialog window.

Verification

You can verify that URT configured the switch by connecting to the switch and using the switch's commands. For example, for Catalyst 5000 switches, open a connection to the switch's console (for example, using Telnet), and enter the show vmps command. The command should show that VMPS is disabled (this indicates that there is not a VMPS server on the switch). If VMPS is not disabled, use the set vmps state disable command to disable it. The show vmps command should also show the URT server's IP address being used for the VMPS domain server.

Tips

In order for URT to configure VMPS on the switch, you must first set up the correct SNMP write community string for the switches in CWSI Campus. See the CWSI Campus documentation for more information.
The switch only shows up in URT if you perform an ANI discovery in CWSI Campus before starting URT. If you perform the discovery while URT is running, refresh the URT switch list by selecting the Switch folder and clicking View>Refresh.
You can select a range of switches by using Shift+click, or multiple individual switches by using Ctrl+click. All switches you select are assigned the same URT servers for use as VMPS servers. If you want all switches to use the same VMPS configuration, you can select the Switches folder or the VTP domain folder rather than select individual switches.
The switch uses the primary VMPS server unless it is unavailable, in which case the switch uses the secondary servers in the order you specify. You can determine which server the switch is currently using by selecting the switch in the folder pane and looking at the VMPS Address column, where the current server is indicated by "(Current Server)."
If all the URT servers that a switch is using for VMPS servers are unavailable (due to network connectivity problems, or problems with the URT server machines), users connected to that switch are left in the default VLANs defined on the switch's ports. Users are not prevented from logging into the network.
You can designate only one URT server as the primary VMPS server for a given switch.
The IP addresses of the installed URT servers are listed in the URT Servers folder in the folder pane. You can determine which switches are configured to use a particular URT server by selecting the server. URT list pane (right-hand pane) shows the IP addresses of each switch that uses the URT server as a VMPS server, whether the switch uses it as a primary or secondary server, and whether the switch is actively using the server for VMPS.
You can use the switch's commands to set the URT servers as the switch's VMPS servers if you prefer using the command line.
You can balance the load among a set of URT servers by assigning a given URT server to be a primary VMPS server for some switches, and a secondary server for other switches. Do not make a single URT server the primary VMPS server for all of your switches (unless you only have one URT server).
You can turn off VMPS on a switch by entering blanks in the VMPS fields and clicking Set VMPS on Switches.

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