Should you forget your password, click on the Forgot user ID or password? link. This will bring up the access recovery page as shown:
If you have forgotten both your user name and your password, enter your email address in the top box and click submit. If you are registered in the system, an email will be sent with your user name but no password.
If you have only forgotten your password, enter your user name in the bottom box and click submit. Your password will be reset to a random text sequence and an email will be sent to you containing the new password only.
Once you have signed in, you can change your password by clicking on the Click here to change your password link on the main administration page. This will redirect you to the password update page.
To update your password, enter your current password, the new one twice and click on submit.
When you first access the Composable Architecture Platform console you are presented with a login screen as shown:
You can select the preferred language to use for accessing the system. If you change the language, the login page will change accordingly. The language you select will be stored as a cookie within your browser, so you only have to select it once.
You can now sign in using the user ID and password provided by the system administrator. If you are the system administrator and this is the first time that you are signing into the system, you can use the word admin for both the user ID and password.
Note that both user IDs and passwords are case sensitive.
Once you have logged in, you will have visibility of all of the Composable Architecture Platform servers defined within the console. You can see the status of each server by expanding the Servers section of the administration tree as shown below.
Servers with a green tick in front of them are recognized as being online and available. Servers with a red exclamation mark are offline and unavailable. To see the status of an individual server, click on the icon in front of it. An example of a server’s status is shown below.
If you have a lot of servers, you can filter them by host name, port number or description.
The filter stays in place, not just for the active servers but also filters the list of servers accessible for deployment.
Before you start using the product, there are a number of important tasks that you should perform to get the most out of the product, and to secure the console from unauthorized access.
The first step is to click on the "Administration" section of the console and select "Console Setup".
You will see a page that allows you to configure a number of console settings:
The first and most important thing to decide is the console type. Composable Architecture Platform ships as a single distribution, but it can be used in a variety of configurations. By selecting the console type, Composable Architecture Platform will delete elements that are unnecessary for the specific installation. The Demo Server is the most suitable type for training and testing, whereas the other listed types are all production configurations. Once you have selected the type you wish to use there is no undo. If you select the wrong type you will have to reinstall the product.
Unless the system where you have installed the console has a direct connection to the internet, you will need to configure the console's web proxy. If you leave your console without internet access, then you will be unable to receive product updates, new extensions, case studies and fixes.
If you are behind a web proxy that uses Microsoft NTLM authentication, you must also set the Web Proxy Domain value. For Microsoft NTLM to work correctly the Web Proxy Host should be the fully qualified network name of the proxy,
for example: mywebproxy.mycompany.com,
and the Web Proxy Domain should be the simple name for the domain.
Having an email server defined for the console is an essential step in ensuring that you can reset lost passwords and recover forgotten user IDs. It is also a requirement if you intend to use the email second factor login method.
Please note that unless a mail server is defined, there is no way to recover a lost password. It is often important to set the email sender as many SMTP servers are configured to reject email from unknown senders.
Once you have defined your console type, web proxy and email setup, make sure you click the save button to store the settings. If these settings have been edited, you must restart the console server.
After the console has been configured, you should ensure that the list of authorized users is correct by clicking on the "Administration" section of the console and selecting "Users".
As a minimum, you should set up a new personal account. The User ID is required to be at least 6 characters long and may not contain spaces.
Supply your real name, email and set the user type to be Administrator. Administrators are not required to have a user role, but it is a good idea to provide your time zone as this will make reports and search queries match your local time.
Finally supply a strong password twice and click on Create.
At this point we recommend that you log out of the console and log in as your new user.
By default, the console ships with 3 active accounts: admin, super and security. All of these accounts have elevated access to manage the console and should not be left with default passwords (which for all of them is the same as the user ID).
If you decide to keep these accounts, as a minimum you should change their passwords and supply them with a valid email address that can be used for a password reset.
After you have completed the console setup, click on Console at the very top of the administration tree:
If there are updates, fixes, new rules, case studies or other material ready on our update server, there will be a message about those updates.
To see the updates available, simply click on the notification.
Please note that the updates available depend on the type of server licenses you have installed
The update screen will appear as shown below.
Depending on how your console was shipped, downloads will include new or updated rule examples, new or updated extensions and updates to demo and the console application itself.
Note that brand new updates are marked with the BETA tag for 7 days after their release. This is done to allow you to apply updates conservatively.
To install a given update, simply select it and click on Install selected (alternatively you can install all updates available by clicking on Install all).
If you choose to download a console update, please be patient as they can exceed 25Mb in size and can take several minutes do download and install. Once the download update is completed, simply log out of the console, wait around 30 seconds, and log back in to get the new version. Any users who don’t log out will simply remain on the old version until they do.
Note that if you install a new application version, you should always clear your browser cache to pick up any changes.
In some instances, the console does not have direct internet access. To still facilitate the download of updates, Composable Architecture Platform can use a fallback mechanism known as CORS (Cross-Origin Request Services). This essentially allows the console to reverse proxy through the browser used to access it. At the time of release only the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox support this web technology.
In this section we assume that the Composable Architecture Platform console application has been installed or activated and that you have access to a URL that brings up the login screen. If this is not the case, please refer to Installation and Configuration for instructions on how to install and configure the product.
Login
Essential Things to do First
Keeping the Product Current
Common Console Management Tasks
Viewing Active Servers
