Connector autodiscovery and pairing from the agent

At the Connector step of the wizard you do not have to hunt for addresses or ask anybody where the device sits. The Sefthy Agent, which you just installed on the server, looks at the customer network and the Console shows you what it found.

How it finds it

The agent looks for the connector on the server network, VLANs included. The Console then confirms that the device it found really is yours, and no secret travels on the network.

What you see at the Connector step

While it searches, the Console shows Searching the network… and then Verifying what we found…. There are four outcomes.

• Connector found and verified. It is already selected in the list below, with the Detected on the network chip. You review it and finish.
• Sefthy device detected, not active yet. The device is there but was never configured. Activate and associate appears.
• No connector answered on this server’s network. This can be normal, it may sit on another of the customer networks. Pick one from the list.
• Manual verification needed. There are several devices with the same identity on the network. Nothing is activated automatically, you pick from the list yourself.

Search again restarts the scan from scratch, with a fresh verification.

The list of connectors is always down there, in all four cases. A connector that is not active yet can be selected too, it carries the Inactive chip and the Console reminds you that the cloud restore will want it online when started.

Activate and associate

When the device found is virgin, Activate and associate does from here everything that used to be done by hand on the device. The Console sends it the configuration, it applies it and in about two minutes it is operational and already associated with this DR. You do not have to reach its local interface or paste anything.

On Sefthy hardware with a serial number the Console also checks that it was shipped to your company. If it turns out to be shipped to another one the activation does not start, and the message invites you to contact support. An ISO installation on your own hardware, with no serial number, works just the same.

During activation the page refreshes itself. If the device takes longer than expected, The device has not answered yet appears with Retry activation, or you pick a connector from the list and move on.

When the search finds nothing

The search only reaches as far as the server network reaches, so in some cases the limit stays. These are the common situations.

• Connector on another segment. If there is a router between server and connector, the request never arrives. No configuration makes it pass.
• VLAN not present on the server. A VLAN that does not exist on the server, or a card with no IP address, is not searched.
• Local firewall. A firewall on the server blocking traffic towards the local network makes the search fail silently.
• Switch isolating the ports. Client isolation, private VLANs and the like take the search’s road away.
• Connector on old firmware. Devices that have not received the update yet do not answer. They keep working, they are just paired by hand.
• Agent no longer listening. If the agent goes quiet before reporting anything, the search scene does not show and the step falls back to the plain list.

In all of these cases the only difference is that you pick the connector yourself.

Pairing by hand

Under the search scene there is always the list of your company connectors. You select the right one and finish the setup.

If the connector does not exist yet you create it from there. The Console issues the Activation Token and you paste it into the Token page of the device local interface, as covered in Installation on x86 devices. As soon as the connector activates, the page notices and lets you carry on.

The full wizard round, from the installation command to the final confirmation, is in The DR wizard with the Sefthy Agent.