You can configure the Business Dashboard and Dashboard viewlets to use a proxy server to communicate with VMware Smart Assurance applications (for example, IP Availability Manager and Global Manager) that reside behind a firewall. Using a proxy server, the number of firewall ports that need to be opened is reduced to one.

Before you configure these VMware Smart Assurance Java clients, ensure that the web server that will act as the proxy satisfies the requirement. “Requirement for the proxy server” on page 29 describes these requirements.

To configure the VMware Smart Assurance Java clients to use a proxy server, perform the following steps:

  1. Your firewall administrator needs to open Port 80 on the firewall to enable communications between the client and a web server.

    Through a series of requests, the client communicates with a web server and that web server acts as the proxy to the VMware Smart Assurance applications.

  2. Use a text editor (not sm_edit) to edit the Proxy properties described in Parameters for properties file in the appropriate properties file (where BASEDIR is/opt/InCharge/SAM/smarts or C:\InCharge\SAM\smarts\):

    • If you are using the web console (or Java Web Start), modify the webconsole.properties file in the

      • BASEDIR/smarts/tomcat/webapps/webconsole directory.

      • If you are using the Business Dashboard and viewlets, modify the dashboard.properties file in the

      • BASEDIR/smarts/tomcat/webapps/templates directory.

  3. Use the sm_edit utility to modify the properties.conf file.

    • If you are using the Global Console, modify the BASEDIR/smarts/conf/console/properties.conf file on the machine where the Global Console is running.

Table 1. Parameters for properties file

Parameter

Value

com.smarts.proxyHost

"<Host name where the web server is running>"

com.smarts.proxyPort

<Port number of the web server>

com.smarts.proxyAuthString

"<Authentication string if authentication is required>"

com.smarts.proxyAdditionalHeaders

"<Additional HTTP Requests if any >"

The parameters com.smarts.proxyAuthString and com.smarts.proxyAdditionalHeaders are optional.

For com.smarts.proxyAuthString, the value depends upon the type of authentication scheme the web-server supports. For example, if it supports Basic Access Authentication Scheme, and if the Username is “User” and Password is “Password,” the value would be:

"Proxy-Authorization: basic VXNlcjpQYXNzd29yZAo=\r\n"

Then string “VXNlcjpQYXNzd29yZAo=” would be the base64 encoding of, “User:Password”.

For com.smarts.proxyAdditionalHeaders, the value could be any valid HTTP request like this, for example:

         "GET http://www.example.com HTTP/1.1 \r\nHost: example.domain.com \r\n"