What services in the Slave does the Master console server control when I cascade

Cascading enables you to cluster distributed console servers so a large number of serial ports (up to 1000) can be configured and accessed through one IP address and managed through the Master's Management Console. 

The Master is in control. You can still change all the settings on any Slave serial port (such as alter the baud rates) using the local Slave Management Console. However these changes will be overwritten next time the Master sends out a configuration file update. 

The Serial & Network: Cascaded Ports menu displays all the slaves and the port numbers they have been allocated on the Master. If the Master console server has 16 ports of its own then ports 1-16 are pre- allocated, so the first Slave added will be assigned port number 17 onwards. 

 

Once you have added all the Slave console servers, the Slave serial ports and the connected devices are configurable and accessible from the Master's Management Console menu; and accessible through the Master's IP address e.g.

• Select the appropriate Serial & Network: Serial Port and Edit to configure the serial ports on the Slave
• Select the appropriate Serial & Network: Users & Groups to add new users with access privileges to the Slave serial ports (or to extend existing users access privileges)
• Select the appropriate Serial & Network: Trusted Networks to specify network addresses that can access nominated Slave serial ports
• Select the appropriate Alerts & Logging: Alerts to configure Slave port Connection, State Change or Pattern Match alerts

All such configuration changes made on the Master are propagated out to all the Slaves. So whenever you change any User privileges or edit any serial port setting on the Master the updated configuration files will be sent out to each Slave in parallel. The Slaves will then make appropriate changes to their local configurations (i.e. only make those changes that relate to its particular serial ports). 

So the Master is in control of all Slave serial port related functions .... however it is not master over all the Salve functions:

• the Master is not master over the Slave network host connections

• the Master is not master over the Slave console server system itself

So Slave functions such as IP, SMTP & SNMP Settings, Date &Time, DHCP server must be managed by accessing each Salve directly and these functions are not over written when configuration changes are propagated from the Master. Similarly the Slaves Network Host and IPMI settings have to be configured at each Slave.