WCS: WCS HA FAIL OVER – HOW TO MANUALLY FAIL OVER!? – DID YOU KNOW?

I’ll save you a call to TAC … How to fail over your WCS server in HA mode manually..

I initially thought, shutting down the primary WCS gracefully it would failover to the secondary WCS. It didn’t.

WHAT I LEARNED …

If you shut WCS down gracefully “StopWCS” she doesn’t failover. In fact, either you have to pull the cable or hard shut down the server for the WCS to failover.

TESTING WCS HA FAIL OVER

If you want to test WCS fail over from your primary to secondary WCS server enter the following command in the primary WCS server CLI:

/WCSROOT/bin/nmsadmin.bat -switchover stop

ENJOY!



WCS: WCS Server Diagnostics Page

I always enjoy speaking to knowledgeable Cisco TAC engineers. I recently was experiencing some VERY SLOW WCS server response. The TAC engineer enlightened me to a “Server Diagnostics Page”

 “I find it most successful to have multiple windows open to WCS at the same time, one of the GUI and one of the diagnostic page.  Navigate a page in the GUI, then change windows to the diag page and click Refresh.  Use the browser's File > Save As utility to capture a copy of the diag page while WCS is in pain, and send it in for review.  We'll take a look at what the Java threads are doing, and what tables they're interacting with, and know better what actions to take to address the latency.” --TAC

 https://<WCS>/webacs/pages/admin/serverDiagnosticInfo.jsp



WCS: Limited Audit Trail in WCS

As our engineering group grows, so does the need for proper auditing measures. A user with Admin credentials to WCS has the power at his/her fingertips to make changes to your WLAN enterprise.

Currently, there is very limited accounting visibility in WCS itself. In fact, if you want detailed accounting you need to look at ACS AAA logs.

Bug / Feature Request - CSCta98733 Need TACACS accounting support on WCS

CSCta98733 Need TACACS accounting support on WCS.

The above case number can be used for bug tracking. It hasn’t been mentioned WHEN this feature will go in and I understand it was “postponed.”

LOCAL WCS AUDIT

WCS currently does offer very limited local visibility into WHO and WHEN they logged in.

Go->Administration->AAA->(User/groups/active sessions) and click on Audit Trail.

Again, very limited and pretty disappointing.



Cisco WCS Root-User Password Reset (Windows)

  

If you are reading this then you probably forgot your root-user password like I just did. Its simple to change here is how:

First you need to have access to the server in which WCS is installed. Drop into the DOS prompt of the server (run->cmd).

Navigate to where WCS is installed and dive down into the "\bin" directory. The next order of business is to stop wcs. This is important and don’t cowboy this, because you may cause yourself some issues with the database if you don’t.

Here is how to stop the WCS server on the DOS prompt with \StopWCS command:

D:\Program Files\WCS6.0.132.0\bin\StopWCS

Next you need to run the root-user command. The <PASSWORD> is where you will enter your new root-user password.

D:\Program Files\WCS6.0.132.0\bin\passwd root-user <PASSWORD>

Once you run this it may take a few minutes but you will receive feedback like this:

Output:
----------
Initializing...
Updating root password.
This may take a few minutes...
Successfully updated root user

Next simply restart WCS and your root-user password should be reset!

D:\Program Files\WCS6.0.132.0\bin\StartWCS