System information

Help | IQ-Series Appliance | Version 1.6.x

The Configuration > System page displays current information about the appliance, including appliance version, platform, the appliance date/time determined by Websense blueSKY, and how long the appliance has been running since the most recent appliance restart.

You can also select 1 of the following operating modes for the appliance:

Active

Bypass

An appliance in active mode is monitoring network traffic, provided the appliance is registered and enabled in the Websense blueSKY portal (Network Devices > Add/Edit Appliance). If the appliance is not enabled in Websense blueSKY, traffic continues to flow through the appliance and is monitored, but no web policy is applied.

When an appliance is in bypass mode, web traffic is not monitored although it continues to flow. In a hardware bypass situation, all traffic is permitted, but communication with Websense blueSKY is compromised.

The button to toggle appliance operating mode is labeled Activate or Bypass, depending on the current appliance mode. Click Activate to allow an appliance in bypass mode to begin monitoring network traffic. After appliance activation, click Bypass to place the appliance in bypass mode if desired.


	Note When you switch from 1 appliance operating mode to the other, link autonegotiation causes a short outage (less than 10 seconds) on the bridge interfaces.

You may perform the following appliance operations on the System page:

Reboot

Power off

Click Reboot to restart the appliance, and click Power off to turn off appliance power.

Hostname

The appliance hostname or FQDN that you entered in the First-Time Configuration Wizard appears as a hypertext link in the Hostname or FQDN field. See Appliance hostname for details and format examples. Click the link to open the Edit Hostname dialog box for updating the hostname.

The name may consist of 1 - 32 alphanumeric characters, dashes, and periods. It must begin with a letter and cannot end with a period.

If you use Active Directory authentication, the following hostname requirements are enforced:

Total length of 2 - 128 alphanumeric characters (including hostname and parent domain name elements; format is hostname.parentdomain)

May include dashes, underscores, and periods

Must begin with an alphanumeric character

Cannot end with a dash, underscore, or period

Hostname element length should be between 2 and 15 characters

Cannot match any of the following reserved words:


ANONYMOUS	BATCH	BUILTIN
DIALUP	INTERACTIVE	INTERNET
LOCAL	NETWORK	NULL
PROXY	RESTRICTED	SELF
SERVER	SERVICE	SYSTEM
USERS	WORLD


	Note You must disconnect from an Active Directory server before you update the hostname. You may reconnect to the server after a successful update.

After you update the hostname, you are prompted to log back in to the appliance.

Active Directory authentication

Use the Active Directory Authentication section to connect to an Active Directory server to enable browsers for NTLM transparent password authentication. When this screen first opens, the current status is Disconnected, and a button labeled Connect appears.


	Important NTLM2 Session authentication is not supported. You should use either NTLMv1 or NTLMv2 authentication. See the Getting Started Guide for configuration details.

Establish a connection to an Active Directory server for authentication using the following steps:

Click Connect to open the Active Directory Authentication dialog box.

Enter the following server information in the appropriate fields:

Domain name

Active Directory administrator name

Active Directory administrator password

You should note that this password is used only for establishing the server connection. The content of this field is not stored anywhere in the system.

Indicate how the system finds the domain controller by selecting 1 of the following options:

Auto-detect using DNS

This option works properly only if your DNS is correctly configured.

The detection process recurs periodically, to synchronize any Active Directory deployment changes.

Enter a domain controller name or IP address.

You can specify backup servers in a comma-separated list.

The connection cannot be made if the server hostname does not adhere to Active Directory naming restrictions. See Hostname for a detailed list of Active Directory hostname requirements.


	Note The appliance must be able to access the Active Directory server IP address and port(s). You may need to edit an internal firewall setting or LAN routing rule.

After a connection is successfully established, the button name changes from Connect to Disconnect.


	Note Disconnecting an Active Directory server from the appliance does not remove the machine from the Active Directory system. The Disconnect operation only terminates the connection between the appliance and the specified Active Directory server.

Appliance diagnostics include a set of tests for Active Directory operations. See Diagnostics for information about running the diagnostics.


	Note End users who validate against a local Active Directory for NTLM authentication cannot use email addresses as user names and must use domain\username format (for example, MYCOMPANY\jsmith).