Different Views for Different Devices

One of the most appealing things about Orion is the ability to drill-down from high-level info into details.  You see something green or red on the screen, you click on it, you go to a view that has more details about the thing you clicked on.  It’s powerful yet simple.  That simplicity of interaction comes from a sophisticated object model.  Users almost always start at a Summary view.  Summary views typically show everything across the managed network—e.g., all nodes, or all applications, or all network interfaces.  If you click on a node from a summary view, you go to Node Details view. That view will show lots of information about the node. 

In most cases, for most devices, you will go to exactly the same Node Details view.  It’ll show the same data in the same locations on the screen, just for the specific device you clicked.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  You can, for many devices, create a distinct view.  For instance, by default, wireless controllers have a different node details page because these devices include data that makes sense only for this device type (e.g., a list of “thin” access points).

The Orion construct we used to build the wireless view (and also the VMware ESX view) is Views by Device Type. We have a list of many common network devices that allow custom views; however, when we ship a new Orion, most of those views are set to the default view.  You can use this same technique we used to build your own custom views for particular devices.

Here’s a default view:

Here’s a view for wireless controllers.

How do you set up views by device type?  First, you need to create a custom view for a type of device.  Go to Admin > Manage Views.  From here you can add a completely new view or you can copy the existing Node Details view and then modify it. 

There are lots of resources to choose from in building something custom.

Next, you go to Admin > Views by Device Type > Node, then click edit.   You’ll then click the drop-down box and select the name of the custom view you created.   You can repeat for each node type, if you  want to get into serious customization. 

Note that we have the same construct for different of network interfaces, so you can customize there, too.

Views by Device Type allows you to further customize your Orion web console.  You might show different stats for Windows and Linux servers.  Or you might use different Custom HTML or User Links resources for HP Switches vs.Cisco switches.  Throw in a few universal device pollers, and you have a bunch of device-specific “dashboards”.  It’s a powerful feature that isn’t used as often as it might be, so give it a spin.