Global Aliases are aliases that can be configured in the Ecessa Insight interface and then pushed to all Sites in the account. These allow for central management of aliases and allows shared aliases to be updated on all sites at the same time. Devices must be running Ecessa firmware version 10.6 or newer to support Global Aliases.
Ecessa Insight Interface
In the Ecessa Insight interface there is link to Global Aliases on the left side menu. In the following example there are two sites, one with the serial number 00123461 and a second with the serial number 00123460. There is a Global section, a 00123461 section, and a 00123460 section. Each section is a namespace used to differentiate aliases with the same name.
In this example there is an alias in the global namespace named AliasExample that contains the IP 192.0.2.200 and an alias in the 00123461 namespace called AliasExample that contains the IP 203.0.113.50. The 00123461 namespace has also been give the name SanAntonio which can be used instead of the serial number to reference a namespace.
When editing Global Aliases changes are not saved or pushed until the appropriate button is clicked. To cancel changes without saving click the Cancel button. The Save button will save changes but not yet push the changes to the Sites. The Push button will push the currently configured Global Aliases to the Sites. This can be used if a new site has been added or if changes have previously failed to push. The Save and Push button will save the current changes and immediately push those changes to the Sites.
Ecessa Device Web Interface
In the Ecessa device's web interface Global Aliases can be seen by clicking on View Basic Setup along the top menu bar. Near the bottom there is a section called 'Global Aliases' that will display aliases that have been pushed to the device.
Global Aliases will be prefixed by the namespace they were entered in. The aliases configured in the Ecessa Insight interface are saved on the device as global.AliasExample and 00123461.AliasExample. Aliases can also be referenced using the name of the namespace such as SanAntonio.AliasExample. The prefix will prevent Global Aliases from conflicting with locally configured aliases that do not have a prefix.
Global Alias Usage
Global Aliases can be used anywhere a regular alias can be used. The full name, including the prefix, must be used to reference the Global Alias. This is demonstrated in the following image showing the previously demonstrated aliases used in Static Routes. Entry #2 and #3 reference the same alias, once using the serial number prefix and once using the named prefix.
Tips & Best Practices
- Using Global Aliases to plan ahead for multiple-site deployments can help orchestrate the deployment of new sites more quickly.
- Renaming a Global Alias is allowed in the Ecessa Insight interface but in-use aliases will not be updated on the device. Only rename aliases before they are pushed to devices and used in rules.
- Namespaces other than global are created and removed based on sites added to the Ecessa Insight cloud interface. Deleting a Site will remove the associated namespace and any aliases in that namespace. If a site is replaced due to upgrade or RMA it must be deleted and re-added to Ecessa Insight. Since the serial number version of the prefix will change after replacing a site it is best to use a named prefix so that aliases can be re-entered in a new namespace with the same name as the deleted namespace. This will prevent the need to update rules on the device to use a new alias name.
- Global Aliases will only be pushed to the active member of a hardware failover pair. Replication to the idle device must be done via the web interface of the device. Additional information about hardware failover can be found in the article Hardware Failover Configuration
0 Comments