NEMS from a beginners standpoint.
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2020 1:52 pm
Well so far so good. A few interesting things coming out my playing with NEMS for the first few days.
First off I started on a Raspberry Pi 3A+ This was a huge mistake on my part. The 3+ is more than capable of running NEMS right out of the box, but you are asking for issues. First and most important issue, is there no Ethernet port of the 3A. No problem you think, I can use WiFi! Well yes you can, except there goes your ability to do a headless install, you 100% require a display and keyboard to set up the WiFi. Also when you are setting up the WiFi follow the MENS instructions, NOT the Raspbian instructions. These two sets of instructions are different and I started with the Raspbian method, there is 24 hours of frustration. Once you have the WiFi running you are good to go, albeit a little slower than you might like.
Second thing is there is NEMS and there is Cockpit. This is obvious unless it isn't. All over the place there are instructions about going to nems.local:9090. This gets you to cockpit, this is great, but if you are just starting you probably don't want to be there. you want to go to https://nems.local. This gets you the NEMS main menu, trust me you need this to get things going.
Third thing I discovered was, WOW are there a lot of options. I mean TONS of them. There are many ways to get NEMS to watch your Windows computers. Some are far more complex than others. Require clients to be installed, others require a lot of configuration inside Windows. Not saying either one is better than the other, they are just different.
Where I am now, is the stage I am at now. Do numerous setups from the ground up. This is specially easy with the Pi. Just swap SIM cards around. This is the time I plan ahead for what I think I want my NEMS to look like when complete.
I hope to make this an on going blog of my experiences with NEMS. And how successful I am at getting the various functions of NEMS to solve issues for me.
Here are a list of what I want to achieve over time:
1) Monitor PC's on both LAN and WAN for basic information (disk space, up/down, Ethernet usage)
2) Monitor smart switches (all are HP Procurve) over the entire WAN for total data traffic, and peak demands. This will be history reporting, not real time monitoring.
3) Monitor access points for new connections, and attempted connections. In time would like to have a list of "Known" devices, thus the reporting is only on unknown devices.
4) And of course monitor printers, toner levels up time, pages printed.
Not sure what order I will be getting these items done in, time will tell.
Will keep you posted as to my progress!
Greg
First off I started on a Raspberry Pi 3A+ This was a huge mistake on my part. The 3+ is more than capable of running NEMS right out of the box, but you are asking for issues. First and most important issue, is there no Ethernet port of the 3A. No problem you think, I can use WiFi! Well yes you can, except there goes your ability to do a headless install, you 100% require a display and keyboard to set up the WiFi. Also when you are setting up the WiFi follow the MENS instructions, NOT the Raspbian instructions. These two sets of instructions are different and I started with the Raspbian method, there is 24 hours of frustration. Once you have the WiFi running you are good to go, albeit a little slower than you might like.
Second thing is there is NEMS and there is Cockpit. This is obvious unless it isn't. All over the place there are instructions about going to nems.local:9090. This gets you to cockpit, this is great, but if you are just starting you probably don't want to be there. you want to go to https://nems.local. This gets you the NEMS main menu, trust me you need this to get things going.
Third thing I discovered was, WOW are there a lot of options. I mean TONS of them. There are many ways to get NEMS to watch your Windows computers. Some are far more complex than others. Require clients to be installed, others require a lot of configuration inside Windows. Not saying either one is better than the other, they are just different.
Where I am now, is the stage I am at now. Do numerous setups from the ground up. This is specially easy with the Pi. Just swap SIM cards around. This is the time I plan ahead for what I think I want my NEMS to look like when complete.
I hope to make this an on going blog of my experiences with NEMS. And how successful I am at getting the various functions of NEMS to solve issues for me.
Here are a list of what I want to achieve over time:
1) Monitor PC's on both LAN and WAN for basic information (disk space, up/down, Ethernet usage)
2) Monitor smart switches (all are HP Procurve) over the entire WAN for total data traffic, and peak demands. This will be history reporting, not real time monitoring.
3) Monitor access points for new connections, and attempted connections. In time would like to have a list of "Known" devices, thus the reporting is only on unknown devices.
4) And of course monitor printers, toner levels up time, pages printed.
Not sure what order I will be getting these items done in, time will tell.
Will keep you posted as to my progress!
Greg