Hi,
Is it possible to reach the Web Interface on a given Element card, when accessing it via a Replicated Element?
Thanks.
That will likely not work. A replicated element receives the raw data for all of its parameters from another DataMiner System, where the source element is managed. The raw data is reconstructed into a managed element based on the driver (i.e. for that reason the DataMiner System where you create the replicated element needs to have the proper driver).
If you open the replicated element, it will show a data display page with the web interface (because that is defined in the driver), but it will not load the webpage, because that is a combination of the polling IP of the element and the URL structure defined by the driver. But it is a replicated element, so it does not have a polling IP address. So therefore Cube will not be able to open the URL for the web interface of the element if you try that on a replicated element.
Did a quick test, and this confirms the below. The replicated element has a ‘web page’ (as this is defined in the driver that it uses), but it fails to construct the URL, because it has no polling IP.
It would require some modifications (i.e. we would have to adapt software to stream the polling IP of the source element along with the raw metrics to the destination element, and to get it into the source IP polling of the destination element or at least to have the embedded webpage feature to recognize and use this ‘alternative’ polling IP). And it would only serve a limited number of cases where this capability can effectively be used (because it was really designed to pass on resources from the DMS of one company to the DMS of another company – and if that’s the case, the polling IP address will not even be reachable from within the network of the destination, and therefore this feature will still not work). I assume that the polling IP address in this case is reachable in the destination DMS ecosystem (because else this would be a mute discussion), and then I wonder if this one use case cannot be addressed with a work-around (e.g. if the number of elements that are replicated and need this are limited, you can edit the Visual Overview on the replicated element and add the native web page in there as an embedded webpage). Would that be an option?
Note that the web interface is only accessible when the client machine has network access to the product itself.
The benefit of using replicated elements is normally to access element-data content of remote elements that are hosted on an external DMS.
So the chance that the device/system is available from the client that is connected to the system containing this replicated element is rather small.
In case it is still required, you can indeed use a custom Visio as Ben suggested to make a hyperlink or inline-webpage appear. (Either point it to a parameter containing the IP if any, or use a property on the element to put the IP reference in.)
Thank you for your feedback. Do we see any business value in changing this behavior going forward?