common_tasks

Common Tasks

OK, so you've installed ONA and you have selected your default domain of "example.com" during install.. what next??

Lets assume a small company (or home network) that has an internet connection, a router, a few LANs and some hosts. The following steps will walk you through a hypothetical environment to show you some of the common day to day activities.

Here is a video walk through of a similar set of tasks for comparison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKAS-vP6_tg

Add some subnets

To start with, you must first have some subnets defined that will allow you to put hosts (PCs, printers, servers etc) on them.

• Click the add subnet link (under tools, or on the main dashboard). Fill out the form as follows:

subnet name: "LAN-EXTERNAL"
type: "LAN"
IP: "11.11.11.128"
mask: "255.255.255.252"

• Next we will create our internal lan for our hosts. Hit add subnet again and enter

subnet name: "LAN-INTERNAL"
type: "LAN"
IP: "192.168.1.0"
mask: "/24"

Hit save. Now we have some subnets that we can start putting some hosts onto.

Add some hosts

After you have saved this last subnet you should be on the subnet display page for LAN-INTERNAL. It contains various bits of information about this subnet. There is a section that lists "associated hosts" that has a hint about adding a gateway host. Its simply reminding you that you might want to add some hosts to this new network you created!

• Click the add a new host button at the bottom of this section. Now we will add our first host, it might as well be our router.

dns name: router
domain: example.com
model: cisco 2821 (router)
ip address: 192.168.1.1 (you can type this in or hit the binoculars to select it from the list)
mac: leave it blank or make one up

When you hit save, you will be presented with a popup message saying "This subnet is the first in the 11.0.0.0 class A range. You must first create at least the following DNS domain: 11.in-addr.arpa". Simply hit ok and a new box will pop up with some DNS domain information. Click Save on this screen as well. This is simply some initial house keeping related to PTR dns records that is done when you introduce a new IP address range that the system is not aware of.

Hit save and you will now see your new router in the list. Lets click on the blue portion of the name listed "router" to view the details of that host. You will see the DNS records and the interfaces for this host.

• Lets click add interface at the bottom and fill out the form

ip address: 11.11.11.129 (you'll want to type this one in for now)
mac: leave it blank or make one up

So to re-cap, we now have an internal and an external subnet and a router that has an IP address (the gateways) on each of these subnets as well as a few DNS records. Now we can add a few devices to our internal network.

• Click the add host button from the tools menu. Now we will add our desktop host.

dns name: desktop
domain: example.com
model: Hewlett Packard dv9000t (laptop) -- Ok, not much to choose from, that's a task for later
ip address: 192.168.1.10 (you can type this in or hit the binoculars to select it from the list)
mac: leave it blank or make one up

You could continue adding more hosts like printers, servers, more desktops etc as needed. Simply select an available IP on one of the subnets you have created. If you need more subnets then create those as needed.

Add extra DNS records

There is A LOT more to cover but this can get you started on adding your subnets and hosts into the system for tracking purposes. From here we could go on to defining details for DNS and DHCP services so that we can actually build those respective configurations from the data we have entered.

One last thing to leave this with is a DNS record example. Lets say I usually refer to my desktop as 'mypowerbox', we might as well go ahead and add that as an alternate DNS name for this box. You should be on the host display screen after adding that last host, so we can start by clicking the add DNS record button.

record type: Leave on A. but other record types are available
host name: mypowerbox
domain: example.com
IP address: 192.168.1.10 (this MUST be an IP that has already been defined in the system)
auto create PTR: Un-check the box, since we are adding a second A record, 
                 there is already a PTR record for this IP.

Hit save and you should now nave two names for this IP, desktop.example.com and mypowerbox.example.com.

Hope this helps to get you started. Play around a bit with the quick search and the advanced search to navigate around the interface. Also note that almost all of the icons you see have an action or some information associated with them if you hover over them. In fact almost ever bit of text also has a tooltip of some sort.