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When introducing StoneGate for a new customer there usually is first just some written security policy e.g. in Excel that describes the IP addresses, IP ranges and network addresses needed for configuring the environment. Now in StoneGate 5.2 you can take that as starting point and save it as CSV or txt format and import your file directly to SMC. The system then auto-generates all the elements that are defined in the input file. This is a very convenient tool when you need to create hundreds or thousands of network elements.

When using CSV/txt import, you need to of course have the information in predefined format.

• For text files the order of the columns needs to be: IP Name Comment. Note that tabulator is used as delimiter.
• For CSV files the order of the columns does not matter if you use CSV with header. Then you need to use the following column headers: “ip“, “name” and “comment“. If you use CSV without the header, you need to use the following column order: IP, Name, Comment.
• Only the IP is compulsory field. (The system can auto-generate the element’s name based on its IP address).

You don’t need to specify the element type in the import file. The system auto-detects the element type based on the IP syntax:

• 10.10.10.10 => Host
• 10.10.10.0/24 => Network
• 10.10.10.10-20.20.20.20 => Address Range

Import framework contains also some generic improvements. When importing elements there often are conflicts – e.g. the element with the same name already exist in the system. Now the administrator has better tools to decide what to do with these conflicting elements.

The system is now able to mark element conflicts as “Identical elements” if they have exactly the same parameters. The administrator can also preview the differences in the Import view before making the decision should the imported element be renamed, ignored or should it actually replace the existing element. The updated Element Import view lets the administrator to preview all elements like this before storing the elements into the Management Server database.

written by teroja - 506 views \\ tags: Autogenerate elements, CSV, elements, import, SMC, Text file