Creating SonicWALL GMS Fields and Dynamic Views

The GMS uses an innovative method for organizing SonicWALL appliances. SonicWALL appliances are not forced into specific, limited, rigid hierarchies. You can simply create a set of fields that define criteria (such as, country, city, state) that separate SonicWALL appliances. Then, create and use dynamic views to display and sort appliances on the fly. For information about organizing SonicWALL appliances, see the following sections:

•	About Default SonicWALL Fields

•	Creating Custom Fields

•	Understanding Dynamic Views

•	Configuring Dynamic Views

•	Changing Views

About Default SonicWALL Fields

The GMS includes standard fields that can be used to sort SonicWALL appliances based on their model, their firmware version, and other criteria. Default GMS fields include the following:

•	AV Enforcement—places the SonicWALL appliances into two groups: appliances that have anti-virus (AV) subscriptions and appliances that do not.

•	AV Status—places the SonicWALL appliances into different groups based on their status.

•	CFS Status—places the SonicWALL appliances into two groups: appliances that have content filtering service (CFS) subscriptions and appliances that do not.

•	Dialup Mode—does grouping based on whether an appliance has switched to dialup mode for Internet access.

•	Firmware—creates a group for each Firmware version and places each SonicWALL appliance into its corresponding group.

•	Management—does grouping based on whether appliances are managed by SSL Management mode, SonicWALL GMS Management Tunnel mode, or Existing/LAN mode.

•	Model—creates a group for each SonicWALL model and places each SonicWALL appliance into its corresponding group.

•	Network Type—creates a group for each network type and places each SonicWALL appliance into its corresponding group. These include:

•

Standard

•	NAT with DHCP Client

•	NAT with PPPoE Client

•	NAT with L2TP Client

•	NAT with PPTP Client

•	NAT Enabled

•

Unknown

•	Nodes—creates a group for each node range and places each SonicWALL appliance into its corresponding group.

•	Registered—places the SonicWALL appliances into two groups: appliances that are registered and appliances that are not.

•	Scheduler—creates a group for each scheduler agent and places each SonicWALL appliance into its corresponding group.

•	UnitStatus—does grouping based on the Up/Down/Provisioned status of appliances.

•	VPN Present—places the SonicWALL appliances into two groups: appliances that have VPN and appliances that do not.

•	Warranty Status—places the SonicWALL appliances into two groups: appliances that have current warranties and appliances that do not.

Creating Custom Fields

When first configuring GMS, you can create custom fields that you can use to organize managed appliances. GMS supports up to ten custom fields.

NOTE: Although GMS supports up to ten custom fields, only seven fields can be used to sort SonicWALL appliances in any view.

The following are examples of custom fields that you can use:

•	Geographic—useful for organizing SonicWALL appliances by location. Especially useful when used in combination with other grouping methods. Geographic fields might include:

•

Country

•

Time Zone

•

Region

•

City

•	Customer-based—useful for organizations that are providing managed security services for multiple customers. Customer-based fields might include:

•

Company

•

Division

•	Department

•	Configuration-based—useful when SonicWALL appliances have very different configurations. (such as, Filtering, No Filtering, Pornography Filtering, Violence Filtering, or VPN).

•

User-type—different service offerings can be made available to different user types. For example, engineering, sales, and customer service users can have very different configuration requirements. Or, if offered as a service to end users, you can allow or disallow network address translation (NAT) depending on the number of IP addresses that you want to make available.

GMS is pre-configured with four custom fields: Country, Company, Department, and State. These fields can be modified or deleted. To add fields, follow these steps:

1	Click the Console tab, expand the Management tree and click Custom Groups.

2	Right-click Custom Groupings in the right pane.

3	Select Add Category from the pop-up menu.

4	Enter the name of the group in the Category Name field.

NOTE: Category names can only contain alpha-numeric characters. Special characters and/or spaces are not accepted.

5	Enter the default value for the group in the Default Value field.

6	Click Ok. You can create up to ten fields.

NOTE: Although the fields appear to be in a hierarchical form, this has no effect on how the fields appears within a view.

To modify or delete fields, right-click any of the existing fields and select Properties or Delete Category, respectively from the pop-up menu.

Understanding Dynamic Views

After creating custom fields and reviewing the GMS fields, administrators can set up views to dynamically filter the SonicWALL security appliances that are displayed in the SonicWALL GMS user interface based on fields.

NOTE: Each view can filter for a maximum of seven fields.

Some views can include the following:

•

Standard Geographic Views—When the number of SonicWALL appliances managed by the GMS becomes large, you can divide the appliances geographically among SonicWALL administrators. For example, if one administrator is responsible for each time zone in the United States, you can choose the following grouping methods:

•	Administrator 1: Country: USA, Time Zone: Pacific, State, City.

•	Administrator 2: Country: USA, Time Zone: Mountain, State, City.

•	Administrator 3: Country: USA, Time Zone: Central, State, City.

•	Administrator 4: Country: USA, Time Zone: Eastern, State, City.

•

Firmware Views—To ensure that all SonicWALL appliances are using the current firmware, you can create a view to check and update firmware versions and batch process firmware upgrades when network activity is low. For example, if you want to update all SonicWALL appliances to the latest firmware at 2:00 A.M., you can use the following grouping method:

•	Firmware Version, Time Zone If you want to update SonicWALL appliances only for companies that have agreed to the upgrade and you want the upgrades to take place at 2:00 A.M., you can use the following grouping method:

•	Company, Firmware Version, Time Zone

•	Registration Views—To ensure that all SonicWALL appliances are registered, you can create a registration view and check it periodically. To create a registration view, you can use the following grouping method:

•	Registration Status, any other grouping fields

•	Upgrade Views—You can create views that contain information on which upgrades customers do not have and forward this information to the Sales Department. For example, you can choose the following grouping methods:

•	Content Filter List, Company, Division, Department

•	Anti-Virus, Company, Division, Department

•	Warranty Status, Company, Division, Department

Configuring Dynamic Views

To create a view, follow these steps:

1	Right-click anywhere in the left pane of the GMS window and select Manage Views from the pop-up menu. The Edit View page appears.

2	Type a descriptive name for the new view in the View Name field.

3	To make this view available to non-administrators, select Visible to Non-Administrators.

4	To add a view category, click Add Level. View categories are used to filter SonicWALL appliances in your view. The Group Categories column contains categories that are a combination of custom fields and SonicWALL GMS fields.

5	To change the Group Category field, select the desired field from the pull-down list. For a list of SonicWALL GMS fields and their meanings, refer to About Default SonicWALL Fields .

6	Choose an Operator to apply to apply to the value for this view:

•	equals (default value)

•	starts with

•

ends with

•

contains

•	does not equal

•	does not contain

7	Type a value for the category in the Value column.

8	You can add up to seven categories or levels.

9	To delete a view category, select the level and click Delete Level.

10	When you are finished configuring this view, click Modify View.

11	When you are finished, click Done.

Changing Views

To change views from within the GMS management interface, follow these steps:

1	Right-click anywhere in the left pane of the GMS window and select Change View from the pop-up menu. The Change View dialog box appears.

2	Select a view and click OK. The SonicWALL GMS management interface displays only the SonicWALL appliances that meet the requirements of the filters defined in the view.