Cisco CDR Reporting and Analytics

 

Updating to the latest release

Recap: You are either a customer with a full license or a prospect evaluating the app and using a trial license.

You are here to either a) update your production build to the latest maintenance release. b) upgrade from the trial version to the full version, or c) update your trial version with a newer trial version.   Also, you’ve also reviewed the Release Notes,  Admin Manual, made backups, etc….

Quick Steps:

If your Splunk server has internet access

  • Open up your Splunk, log in as an administrator, and in the apps list click the gear icon, or on some pages Manage Apps.
  • Search for “sideview” in your apps. This should bring up a list of several apps:
    • Canary
    • Cisco CDR Reporting and Analytics
  • For each that has an update waiting, click the “Update to X.X.X” link and follow the instructions (preferably in the order listed above).
  • NOTE: if you’re updating from a very old version and you do not have the Canary app installed yet, take a brief detour back to our install docs to fix that.li>

If your Splunk server does NOT have internet access

  • Visit these pages and click Download to download the following apps to your local system as tar.gz files.
  • Log in to Splunk as an administrator, and from the apps list click the gear icon (or on some pages Manage Apps).
  • For both of the downloaded apps, click the second button in the upper right, Install app from file.
  • Follow the little wizard each time, selecting each file in turn.
    • You WILL want to check the “upgrade app” option each time.
    • You do not need to restart Splunk in between the two apps – just be sure to do it after the second app is installed.
    • If for any reason it doesn’t ask to restart after the last one, please click Settings then Server Controls and restart Splunk from there.

2) Updating the license (if needed)

Trial Version to Full Version, Extending your Trial, or Renewing Full Version

  1. Find your new license key,which should be in an email from us and clearly marked.
  2. Log into the Splunk UI as an admin user.
  3. Open the Cisco CDR Reporting and Analytics app.
  4. Click Setup, then Update license.
  5. Paste in your new license key, then click the Update License button.
  6. After updating, you’ll see license information including company and expiration date.

3) Updating forwarders, if any

There are a couple of sections here, depending on what version of forwarder you have installed.

First, a word for more experienced Splunk Admins

The TA_cisco_cdr, as found on Splunkbase, is just a Splunk app like any other.  If you already know how to deploy an app in your environment and onto the system that needs this app, then use that method.  (Puppet, Splunk Deployment Server, manual process but at least we *have* a process, etc…)

Do keep in mind that you don’t want overwrite your inputs.conf!  If you followed our installation instructions, they have you edit a TA_cisco_cdr/local/inputs.conf file.  If you did this your input file is fine and will not be overwritten.  If you edited the TA_cisco_cdr/default/inputs.conf file instead, you should first migrate those settings to the local version of the file.

As a final note for those of you who know what you are doing, if your company/Splunk admins already have a convention for deploying inputs (like creating/using an app just for the inputs for this like “TA_cisco_cdr_inputs”), then please work with them to use that convention – we heartily approve of these sorts of standards!

Heavy Forwarders

This was only ever the recommended way to handle the inputs if you already had an HF deployed for some other reason and were going to reuse it for the Cisco CDR inputs as well.

If you do have an HF doing your inputs, then one possibility would be to install/update the TA by using the “Manage Apps” method we outline above for updating the app as a whole.  Just log into the web interface on the HF, go to Manage Apps and click the update buttons.

If this process fails, if the web interface for Splunk is disabled, or if you just want to stay consistent you could also treat it exactly like it’s a Universal Forwarder (below).

Universal Forwarders (and everyone else)

The TA has been repackaged and you can now download it directly from Splunkbase.  Either use the link provided, or open Splunkbase and search for it by searching for “sideview ta”. In either case, locate it on Splunkbase and click the “Download” button.

  • Save the file onto your local system.
  • Use Gunzip and tar, or an application like Winzip, to uncompress the .tgz file.
    • With 7-zip on Windows …
      • Right-click on the file, select 7-zip -> Open Archive”
      • Drill down until you see a folder called “TA_cisco_cdr”
      • Drag/Extract that folder to a temporary location on your system.
    • With gunzip or tar, we’re not giving any hints unless you ask specifically.  We figure you wouldn’t be using those utilities unless you knew how to use them. 🙂

Deploy this TA app out to all Universal Forwarder (or Heavy Forwarder)  instances which are involved indexing the CDR data.  WARNING – Be sure to not overwrite your specific inputs.conf file! Your specific inputs and configurations *should* be stored in a directory “TA_cisco_cdr/local/” and if it is we won’t overwrite those.  But better to check than to have to restore configurations later!  NOTE: At the simplest level, deploying the app means copying the TA_cisco_cdr directory into $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/ on these hosts and restarting the Splunk instance there.

If you want to broaden your Splunk horizons you can also use Splunk’s Deployment Server

Troubleshooting

Not that we expect problems, but Splunk is a complex system and all sorts of interesting things can go wrong.

The majority of the time there’s anything wrong it’s just that your browser is caching things it shouldn’t and using old copies of updated files.  Please try clearing your browser cache (instructions vary based on your browser – Google is your friend) and check again.  Also, try to reproduce the problem in Incognito mode or a new Private Window, depending on your browser.  If that doesn’t resolve your problems, please contact us for help or email support@sideviewapps.com!

The other issue we find is that after updating both apps, you may get a screen telling you “Page not found”.

This is a bug in Splunk that we’re currently helping them to chase down, it’s not serious and is only some misdirection on the part of the update page.  Just click the “here” in the middle and everything will be fine!





If you have any comments at all about the documentation, please send it in to docs@sideviewapps.com.