Open for Voting

Configure NPM to allow a shortcut for SSH at the first screen that can show a node's IP address when hovering over its icon.

I manage 750 switches, routers, load balancers, UPS's, etc., and it occurs to me that there should be a simple way to open an SSH session to any of them directly from NPM; one that minimizes the amount of NPM screens or windows that must be opened to get to the SSH option.

For example, I always have the Orion NPM Summary Home page open on my PC.  The top left section is All Nodes, and when I need to SSH to a specific node, I could start up putty and look up it's IP address in a table, or make DNS entries for all 750 nodes, or use Secure-CRT and create every node in there and then dig for the one I want through the nested sites and open an SSH session that way.

What I usually do is open All Nodes > Cisco > Region > Site and then hover over the node I want so I can see its IP address.  Then I open that address in putty.

Imagine being able to select "SSH" while hovering over the node, and your favorite SSH tool would start up and go to the address of the node.

Good idea?  Feasible?  At present right-clicking just gives the options for the web browser that show up when you right click on any web page.  Left-clicking opens up the Orion page for monitoring the device, and that's just digging in too far, taking too long.

I'm open for other options.  Maybe I'm still in the dark ages for getting a great management solution that enables SSH directly from the Web.

Nortel had its Enterprise Switch Manager with Java Device Manager; together they discovered and mapped the network switches (not routers, not UPS's or F5's, etc.) and showed links and nodes' icons.  The icons could be double-clicked to automatically open an SSH session, or a GUI session through Java Device Manager.

It'd be nice if the node icons in NPM allowed a shortcut to SSH.