So you want to install Cisco Fabric Manager and/or Cisco Device Manager on a Windows 7 x64 computer. Awesome, good for you. Unfortunately like x64 VPN Cisco has in their infinite wisdom not released an x64 version of the Fabric Manger or Device Manager. This makes installing under x64 a lot harder.
The first thing that you’ll need to do is install the Windows XP Mode component of Windows 7. This is a three step process, which will require a couple of reboots during the process.
After installing Windows XP Mode you can install Fabric Manager and Device Manager on the virtual machine. Don’t forget that after you install Fabric Manager the default username and password will be admin and password.
After you install the Fabric Manager and Device Manager the icons won’t show up in the Windows 7 start menu.
The trick to fixing this is to move the Cisco Fabric Manager icon from from “C:Documents and SettingsXPMUserStart MenuPrograms” to “C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersStart MenuPrograms” within the Windows XP virtual machine. To clean up the Windows XP Mode start menu, I’d also recommend moving the ProgressSQL folder from the All Users to the XPMUser folder. At this point you’ll notice that the XP Mode folder under the start menu still looks the same. After you close the Windows XP Mode Virtual machine window, the VM will automatically suspend. When this happens the icons will be updated and the Cisco Fabric Manger icons in the Windows 7 Start menu.
After you do this you’ll be able to copy the Cisco Fabric Manger folder and from under the Windows XP Mode Applications folder in the start menu, and paste it into the “C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms” folder. This will then give you your Cisco Fabric Manager icons in the normal place where you would expect them to be and it will allow you to interact with your Cisco Fabric Manager within your Windows 7 x64 environment.
The only difference that you will see is that instead of the normal Cisco icon in the task bar you’ll see the Windows XP Mode VM icon in the task bar.
Now the nice thing about Windows XP Mode VM, is that it comes preconfigured in a NATed Network configuration, so that if you need to install all this on your laptop, and your host OS VPNs in to your office the Windows XP VM will have access to your corporate network (at least mine does, and I’m using Shrew Soft’s VPN Client to connect to my Cisco VPN Endpoint).
Denny
