ClearCube Grid Center Admin Guide 4.11 - Manual (Page 23)

Grid Center 4.11 Administrator’s Guide Grid Center Console • 17
Grid Center Console
ClearCube Grid Center 4.11 is a web-based application that provides a complete
management interface for an I/Port environment consisting of I8800, Eon e100, and
Capio One I/Ports. I8010 I/Ports are not supported. Grid Center can be accessed
from any machine that has IP connectivity to the machine where Grid Center is
installed.
The Administration Console is the first of three Grid Center components. It can be
installed on any Windows 2000 or 2003 server, or Windows XP Pro system. The
Administration Console acts as a traffic director between I/Ports and Blades. When an
I/Port client is launched, the Administration Console directs it to a specific Blade or to
a group of Blades.
When an I/Port is in Dedicated mode, the Administration Console always directs it to a
specific Blade. In this case, the user logs in to the same Blade every time. When an
I/Port is in Shared mode, the Console directs it to a group of Blades. The Console
tracks utilization on the Blades, and always directs the I/Port to the least utilized Blade
in the specified group.
Grid Center uses TCP ports 6500, 9000, and 3389; and UDP ports 6500 and 9000.
These ports must remain open between network nodes that use Grid Center. The first
time the Grid Center Administration Console is run, it does not have any Blades or
I/Ports populated in its database. To populate Blades and I/Ports, you need to specify
the IP address subnet range that contains the Blades and I/Ports to be managed by
this Grid Center installation. See Configuring the Administration Console on page 29
for more information. After specifying the subnet range, you need to do a process
called Discovery, which searches for Blades and I/Ports in the subnet range. See
Configuring the Authentication Database on page 30 for more information.
When Discovery finds a Blade or an I/Port, it stores the identifying information for
each component in the database. When new components are added to the network,
Discovery can be run again to locate them.
Once a Blade or I/Port has been discovered, Grid Center maintains a record of it and
graphically displays whether it is active on the network. Grid Center maintains these
records indefinitely, and periodically re-discovers Blades and I/Ports. When this
happens, the database is updated. Blades and I/Ports can be manually deleted from
the database if they are physically removed from the network, but if they are
reconnected, they will be saved in the database again when Discovery is run.