Overview… the Reserve-Release-Relinquish button
Using the XenaManager you reserve a port by selecting it in the left-side navigation area, selecting the “Properties” tab in the content area, and clicking the “Reserve” button on the “PORT PROPERTIES” panel:
Once reserved, your user name is now shown as the owner of the port. Also note that all the input fields become active. The configuration of the port can be freely updated, traffic can be started and stopped, packets captured, etc.
When the port is no longer needed it can be released by pressing the same button as before which is now called “Release”:
The port will now be shown as free again, and the input fields are grayed out since no new values can be entered.
Note that if you disconnect from the tester while having ports reserved, that reservation state is maintained just like any other tester state, and others cannot use the port even while you are disconnected. When you connect the next time you will inherit the reserved state and can change the configuration right away.
If you encounter a port that is reserved to someone else, that user’s name is shown in red color and the button is called “Relinquish”:
You can take the port away from the current owner by pressing this button, and then optionally reserve it to yourself. You will be prompted for confirmation, but otherwise there is no barrier to freeing the port. This model supports a cooperative mode of sharing the tester resources between different users.
Finally, when the testbed has many ports and they all need to be reserved, for instance to load a test case, you can use the top-level menu to reserve all the ports of the current testbed:
