Frustrations with EDM

[int21h]

Hey Guys,

We're in a situation where we would like to migrate our 300+ switches to SW 6.2 to take advantage of the improvements to ADAC/LLDP-Med etc. However I feel like I am a constantly frustrated with the issues I experience with EDM. Yet, when I raise these issues with Avaya Support, my frustration levels grow even more.

I get the impression from Avaya we are the only ones experiencing these issues so I thought I would put it out there to see if anyone else is in the same boat as us.

FW: 6.0.0.13
SW: 6.2.3.011

1. I don't mind moving to EDM, however I feel like it's still an unfinished product that hasn't been thoroughly tested in the 'real world'. That being said, i'd be happy to test it if we could still use JDM, but don't lock us into using EDM when it's not properly finished (ie SNMP trap receivers missing in EDM). An another example of this, in EDM  Edit > Diagnostics > Topology  > error appears even on a factory defaulted switch

2. EDM only supports IE7 and Firefox 3.0, therefore whenever you try to log a case, Avaya support will only look at it if you can replicate the problem on IE7.  Which makes me think, how can you release SW code in 2011 but only support a browser released in 2006.

3. From previous readings EDM running locally on the switch (On-Box) will be replaced by COM that will run as "off-box", however at the moment it is running on-box and we have found this puts extra load on the hardware (we use only 55xx & 56xx) and in turn slows down the web-gui making it frustrating to administer.

4.   a.  My biggest bug-bear at the moment is to do with how VLAN & Port Members are displayed in EDM. The column width for port-members is automatically resized to show every port member that is configured on the  biggest (most configured) VLAN. This is another demonstration that EDM was never 'tested' in a 'real-world-environment' because once you have a stack with a number of switches >3 and you have various ports configured, you will see that the column width expands past the screen and you have to scroll a fair distance to see the rest of the columns.

      b.  Second to that, once the column width is rather long, the vlan port members popup box stops appearing.  This is because the column width is so long, that the middle of the column is no longer in the middle of the screen. Avaya support have closed my case with a 'FIX' (not a work around) saying that this is by design and therefore to get pop-up box to work, you must center the scroll bar to the middle of the column.  This makes me super frustrated, does anyone else share the same frustration or are we alone on this one ?   If you haven't seen it, please test it and share your thoughts.

I have attached screenshot explain what i mean about the EDM VLAN Port Members column.

[Michael McNamara]

Your concerns are shared by a large number of people both here in the forums and those following my blog.

It was my opinion that JDM was a significant differentiator for Avaya/Nortel over their competition. Unfortunately, they've decided to through that advantage out the window with EDM.

You could look to the command line to solve some of your issues, however, the Avaya CLI is definitely not up to par with JunOS/NXOS/IOS in my opinion. There have been some significant improvements between 6.1 and 6.2 with respect to EDM so there is progress. Let's not forget that not every feature was in JDM, so it stands to reason that not every feature will be in EDM.

Why are you upgrading to 6.2.x? I've purposely decided to stand at 6.1.5 for the time being until I have an opportunity to evaluate COM and the impact that EDM will have.

[int21h]

Thanks Michael.

I'm hoping that people at Avaya will realise how many people this is really a concern for and start responding to our concerns.

The reason being for staying with 6.2 is because we're deploying a Cisco phone system with over 4000 handsets. Therefore, we want to take advantage to the recent improvements of ADAC as well as stick to the most current stream. Most of our equipment is on the 6.1 stream but we've been told the development of this stream will cease, so rather then worrying about features/bugs not being carried on in 6.1, we made the decision to deploy the phone system with v6.2. We are only rolling out handsets to those switches with 6.2.

We were also sold on the premises that 6.2 was a complete re-write, therefore it should be better........ ?

Yes, I quite often resort to the CLI and use it perform the functions I can't do in EDM.

COM is a very interesting topic for us. We have had Avaya configure it because of certain features that still don't work. We're still waiting for Avaya to 'fix' these for us. Therefore I still don't have an opinion on COM.

[Dominik]

Hi int21h,

a agree with you the JDM have some major advantages over the EDM especially when it comes to performance.

I think you can also work with the EDM, sometimes it is a littlebit frustrating when you know how nice it was with the JDM, but the EDM also do the Job with some disadvantages.
After my first testings with EDM, I was really disappointed. Avaya replaced the webserver in the ERS5000 code with SW 6.2 , since that EDM runs much smoother.
You will get the best performance when you use COM with .war plugin files. It still takes 4x times longer to open a dvice, but runs very smooth when you have opened a device. All graphical output will be handled by your COM server and the config of the switch is still proced to COM with SNMP like it was with the JDM.
(you can get a free trial of the COM on the Avaya homepage)

For your problem with displaying big columms in the VLAN section, I would use a higher resolution on your display. I use 2x 24" displays with a resoltion of 1920x1200 for each display. On smaller displays like e.g. a netbook display the usebality of EDM is not good.

Cheers

[brazenhead]

Hi int21h,

sorry to jump in with some off topic questions, but you say you are using ADAC with Cisco phones? The reason I ask is we are considering deploying ~2000 Cisco phones on our Avaya switch network. I am wondering if you experienced any compatibility issues at all? Other than ADAC, have you tried AutoQOS or Avaya Energy Saver with the Cisco phones?  I am wondering if these features work properly (ADAC can recognize phone and configure its port, Avaya Energy Saver can dim the power of the Cisco phones as opposed to only turning off the port completely, etc).

Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[int21h]

Hi Dominic,
COM is another frustration for us. We have it installed, configured and licensed however there are still bugs that Avaya Support are trying to sort out. So until they sort them out, I won't have time to test or use the trial copy to setup a seperate 'test' server.
Here we all use 2x 22" 1680x1050 which is not as big as your 24", but it all depends which switch stack we connect to and how many port members are configured. We can get around the issue by resizing the column or shifting the scroll bar to the middle of the window, but in a real world environment I think it is more pratical to limit the cloumnwidth so that you don't have to scroll. It would be a "win win" situation!

Hi brazenhead,

No problems. Yes we have ADAC configured and working fine on our Cisco phones. However, we have only tested this on FW 6.0.0.13 & 6.2.3. ADAC has built in QoS settings which seems to work well. We have looked at but haven't played with the Energy Saver function. At the moment we have screen idle timeout configure via the UCS server.

Actually, now that I remember, configuring ADAC via EDM didn't seem to work as well as entering commands via the CLI.

Also from my experience, don't enable DHCP Snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection or IP Source Guard. We have a number of cases opened regarding these security features that don't seem to work, for example DHCP snooping blocks a phone from registering even though its on a TRUSTED port and on a VLAN with DHCP Snooping Disabled. But thats a topic for another thread


Anyhow, here is what we found to be the best working config for ADAC LLDP-MED
adac voice-vlan 700
adac op-mode tagged-frames
adac uplink-port 1/48
adac enable

interface FastEthernet ALL
no adac detection port all mac
adac detection port all lldp
adac port 1/1 enable
vlan port 1/1 filter-unregistered-frames disable
lldp tx-tlv port 1/1 port-desc sys-cap sys-desc sys-name
lldp port 1/1 status txAndRx config-notification
lldp tx-tlv port 1/1 med extendedPSE med-capabilities network-policy

[Michael McNamara]

Here we all use 2x 22" 1680x1050 which is not as big as your 24", but it all depends which switch stack we connect to and how many port members are configured. We can get around the issue by resizing the column or shifting the scroll bar to the middle of the window, but in a real world environment I think it is more pratical to limit the cloumnwidth so that you don't have to scroll. It would be a "win win" situation!

Are you a Firefox user? I'm wondering if I could write a GreaseMonkey script to fix that for you (us)?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/

I've been wanting to play around with GreaseMonkey but I haven't had the time, I hear it's pretty easy to-do.

No promises but that might be a nice distraction for me

[int21h]

Hi Michael,
Yep, we use Firefox and i'll be happy to test for you 

[Dominik]

@int21h

What issues do yu have with COM ?
I know all the vendor management softwares are not perfect.... I have to work besides COM with
Cisco LMS/works and in comparison with that I like COM very much.

I agree with you for the features Dynamic ARP Inspection and IP Source Guard, donīt use it... makes nothing as trouble with Cisco IP Phones. DHCP Snooping works stable in my networks with a few thousend Cisco Phones.
I had in the starting time a problem with DHCP Snooping and Cisco Phones in fact the Cisco Phones send their MAC and DHCP request tagged and untagged to the switch. After a software update from Cisco for their Phones it worked stable in combination with DHCP Snooping.

Would be nice if you can share your expirence with these features with us.

Cheers

[Jon Hurtt]

Guys just want to take some time to comment to some of the issues that int21h brought up...

1. I don't mind moving to EDM, however I feel like it's still an unfinished product that hasn't been thoroughly tested in the 'real world'. That being said, i'd be happy to test it if we could still use JDM, but don't lock us into using EDM when it's not properly finished (ie SNMP trap receivers missing in EDM). An another example of this, in EDM  Edit > Diagnostics > Topology  > error appears even on a factory defaulted switch

Question: Did the error state "TypeError: timeStr is null Please Check the connectivity with the device and try again later"... If so I know Avaya is aware of this error on the ERS 5000 Series, but also know that this error does not affect the device at all. If it is another error can you provide a screenshot?

2. EDM only supports IE7 and Firefox 3.0, therefore whenever you try to log a case, Avaya support will only look at it if you can replicate the problem on IE7.  Which makes me think, how can you release SW code in 2011 but only support a browser released in 2006.

I couldn't agree with you more, moving forward the push is for support of IE9.0 and FF 7.x+ for current device support. But keep in mind with the constant updates to both IE & FF it can be difficult to keep up with their release cycle. Note I personally have been using FF 8.0 and have not experienced any problems.

3. From previous readings EDM running locally on the switch (On-Box) will be replaced by COM that will run as "off-box", however at the moment it is running on-box and we have found this puts extra load on the hardware (we use only 55xx & 56xx) and in turn slows down the web-gui making it frustrating to administer.

Just for clarifications, We have two versions of EDM. On-Box and Off-Box. On-Box is when the Web Server resides on the device (Ethernet Routing Switch) and you access the on board web services to make configuration changes. Off-Box is part of Configuration and Orchestration Management (COM) in which the web services is  performed by the COM Server and SNMP is the mode of communication for Configuration Changes (just like JDM used SNMP). In the initial versions of EDM the resources used to perform the web services were not optimized there for you experienced slow response times.  As you mentioned there has been enhancements to the response time and Avaya will continue to optimize EDM On-Box. Now also as mentioned by others, COM with EDM Off-Box is faster than EDM On-Box. But going forward we will not replace or remove EDM On-box functionality. Like many have suggested if you have tried using COM 2.3 it will remove many of the frustration from slow response time you experience with EDM On-Box

4.   a.  My biggest bug-bear at the moment is to do with how VLAN & Port Members are displayed in EDM. The column width for port-members is automatically resized to show every port member that is configured on the  biggest (most configured) VLAN. This is another demonstration that EDM was never 'tested' in a 'real-world-environment' because once you have a stack with a number of switches >3 and you have various ports configured, you will see that the column width expands past the screen and you have to scroll a fair distance to see the rest of the columns.

      b.  Second to that, once the column width is rather long, the vlan port members popup box stops appearing.  This is because the column width is so long, that the middle of the column is no longer in the middle of the screen. Avaya support have closed my case with a 'FIX' (not a work around) saying that this is by design and therefore to get pop-up box to work, you must center the scroll bar to the middle of the column.  This makes me super frustrated, does anyone else share the same frustration or are we alone on this one ?   If you haven't seen it, please test it and share your thoughts.

I have attached screenshot explain what i mean about the EDM VLAN Port Members column.

Avaya is aware of this issue and working to provide a fix. Thank you for putting together the videos in your other thread (http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ethernet-switching/ers-5500-v6-2-edm-bugs)


I would also encourage you to continue to use this forum to spread information, issues or concerns about Avaya Networking products, but another very useful method would be to contact your local Systems Engineer (SE). In addition to Avaya Support, your Avaya SE can be a great advocate for you  in addressing these concerns. If you need help contacting that person, please reach me offline and I will get you in touch with them.