11th February 2012

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CSM 3.2 – Notes When Upgrading – RME 4.1 Problems.

2nd April 2008 By 9 Comments

I have spent a bit of time yesterday and today installing CSM 3.2. You might want to hear about my experiences.

First thing is that CSM 3.2 is a worthwhile upgrade, mainly because of support for the latest ASA and FWSM code, plus better integration with CS-MARS and IDSM (there are others refer to my post a couple of days ago.

What is a little bit unusual in my installations is the following:

  • we are using Cisco Secure to provide Role Based Access Control within CSM, Common Services and RME.
  • we run CSM on one server (with Common Services) and RME on the other (Common Services) and have a combined login to all the servers.

Warning: The following assumes you are familiar with CiscoWorks management software and how it goes together.

But the installation seems to work OK with this. I can download the CSM 3.2 update (free upgrade from CSM 3.1 provided you have SAS). The CSM 3.2 update also upgrades Common Services to 3.1, but this breaks RME which must be version 4.1. So now I have CSM 3.2, CS3.1 and a broken RME4.01 installation. Excellent.

My current problem is that RME and Common Services is released by the Network Management BU (1) and they do not release RME 4.1 as a separate bundle, only as part of LMS 3.0. Previously you could download LMS 2.6, and only install RME4.01 from the bundle and everything would be OK (in fact that is all you can do, since you don’t have alicense for anything else). But this is not possible in LMS 3.0.
So a very helpful person on the TAC arranges for a RME 4.1 bundle to be cut and released as a special download. Nice, except that it wants a license.

At that point my test servers threw up and had aWindows moment and so I will be spending a couple of days rebuilding them. Again.

You know, there are days when Network Management is a joy, and there are days when you just want to give everything a solid wanging with RITA .

Sigh.

PS: Apologies if this post is cryptic. Post a comment and I will try to translate if I can.

(1) CSM is released by the Security/IDS BU.

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Filed Under: Cisco
About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • http://www.romulusglobal.com Sam Crooks

    So… I ran into the same issue with upgrade of CSM 3.1.1 Sp2 to CSM 3.2 and common serverices 3.1 and have yet to follow-up with TAC.

    How did you go about getting RME 4.1 and a license for it? CSM literature talks about an RME license equal to the number of devices licensed for CSM coming free as part of CSM.

    Regards,

    Sam

  • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

    There is no resolution as yet. It looks as if they completely forgot to sort it out before they released the product. Even worse, the product managers don’t seem to be sure how to fix it. RME comes from the NMBU, while CSM comes from Security. One suggestion was to buy LMS, as if that was an option……

    I have two cases open on the issue for two installations, in one they think they can get a new license through the reseller channel, and in the other one, there seems to be no way to get an updated RME license.

  • D. E. Wach

    Did you ever get any traction on this? We just purchased CSM, and would really like to use RME, but it would appear we’re out of luck if we want to have CSM running the current release. And convincing management to purchase LMS is definitely out of the question (especially since we just coughed up the funds for CSM)…

    Thanks,
    -d

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      I believe a new CD for CSM 3.2 is on the way. This is supposed to contain a new license key that will allow RME to ….. work.

      Seems that the RME license in only on the CD….. oh, yeah, I hear you say. Good one Cisco.

      Remind me if I don’t update here.

  • Joe Stone

    I just installed CSM 3.2 fresh and wondered the same thing about RME 4.1. I have opened a TAC case since we have maintained SAS, so we’ll see what happens. Do you know if the license still exists only on the CD or is there another way?

    Thanks,

    Joe Stone

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      I don’t know. We gave up because it was too much hassle.

  • Khoo

    I’ve got CWLMS 6.0 installed which basically means I have RME 4.1 at hand. I also have CSM 3.1 installed on another server and was thinking about doing an upgrade to 3.2.

    Questions is, can I integrate CSM 3.2 with the RME 4.1 on another server?

  • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

    Yes, you can use the Single Sign On feature that uses Common Services to bring many separate CiscoWorks servers into a singe authentication domain. The Cisco ACS server can also handle AAA or users since the installation extends the ACS schema to add roles and permissions for users.

  • http://www.inzense.com Khoo

    Thanks for the tip Greg. It worked great after I registered the remote RME from Common Services.