Console access on appliances

This article describes methods of accessing the console on Vectra appliances so that you can login as the "vectra" user to perform commands using the CLI.

Console Connection Methods

Depending on model, Vectra appliances have several options for connecting to the console:

KVM

• KVM or Keyboard/Video/Mouse

• This is sometimes known as a "crash cart" in some data centers.

• Use a USB keyboard / VGA monitor if the appliance is an X series appliance. The S series appliances do not have keyboard/monitor functionality.

• Mouse is not supported for console access.

Serial Console

• Specifications: 115200 baud, 8 data bits, no parity bit, one stop bit, and no flow control.

• Use a serial terminal application of your choice (such as Putty).

  • Serial access may require special cable/drivers for laptop, and/or laptop may have group policy GPO restricting use of laptop COM/USB ports.

• Ports will typically be labeled as COM, COM1, Console, or Serial.

• Serial console is only officiall supported for S2, X29/M29, and the X80 appliances. All other Vectra physical appliances do not officially support serial console.

MGT2/LAN2

• Use a directly connected ethernet cable b/w the Vectra appliance and your host and ssh using the "vectra" user to the MGT2 port..

  • It's likely that both crossover and straight through cables will work but if in doubt, use a crossover cable.

• The appliance MGT2 port has a default IP address of 169.254.0.10/16.

  • /16 is 255.255.0.0 for the subnet mask

• Manually set the host's IP/subnet mask that you will connect to MGT2 from using something like 169.254.0.11 with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0

  • This port may be labelled as MGT2, LAN2 or Support depending on the platform.

• Additional detail for this method is available below.

IPMI/iDRAC

• Connect to the IPMI/iDRAC port (HTTP) over your network or a direct ethernet connection and then access the console through the web IPMI/iDRAC interface.

Hypervisor Console

• Using your hypervisor's console, access the virtual appliance console of your virtual Sensors or Brains.

MGT1

• Connect using your network over SSH to the MGT1 IP as the "vectra" user.

• MGT1 Defaults to DHCP.

  • Find the IP address that was assigned to MGT1 from your DHCP server logs

  • If DHCP is enabled in your environment, you can connect to the DHCP address that was assigned or if you have configured a static IP address, you can connect to that IP address.

  • You can also find the IP address by logging into your appliance using one of the other methods and then use the "show interface mgt1" command to display the address that was assigned via DHCP

• Once you have a static assignment, connect to MGT1 using the static address.

General Guidance

If the system is completely unresponsive on all ports please check your settings and try again. It is exceptionally rare, even in a failure scenario, for a system to be unresponsive on the console port.

Systems should not be rebooted as a diagnostic step without explicit guidance from Vectra Support. Rebooting an appliance without proper shutdown may cause system or database corruption.

Accessing the CLI of public cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) deployed appliances:

• Authentication for the "vectra" user is done using an SSH key pair that was used for your appliance deployment.

  • The public key is stored on the appliance and you use your private key to authenticate the "vectra" user.

• Please see the deployment guide for your cloud appliance for specific details.

Default usernames/passwords are contained in this article:

• Default username and password for Vectra appliances

Additional detail regarding login via SSH is available in this article:

• SSH login process for CLI