How to downgrade a hub to robot

Products

DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

I have mistakenly installed a hub to a robot and I want to uninstall to the hub from this robot, how can I achieve this? How do I downgrade a hub to robot?

This is not a common scenario but you might need a hub to become a simple robot, either because the hub probe was mistakenly deployed on a robot or either because the monitoring strategy for the concerned system has changed.

Environment

UIM any version

Resolution

■ Follow these steps:

Rdp/ssh to the hub
Edit the robot.cfg to add the hub you want the robot to join:


hub = <new_hub>
hubrobotname = <new_hub_robot_name>
hubip = <new_hub_ip>

3. Remove the contents of niscache folder - optional

4. Edit the controller.cfg and set the hub to be "active = no”


<hub>
   description = Message concentrator and redistributor
   group = Infrastructure
   active = no
   type = daemon
   command = hub.exe
   config = hub.cfg
   logfile = hub.log
   workdir = hub
   magic_key = 2NU[..]gKQ
</hub>

This step also applies for the hub_secure/hub_adapter probes, if they were deployed.

5. Stop and Start the Nimsoft Service Controller.

Robot should start and join the new hub. Hub probe will be deactivated and can be deleted or redeployed.
If redeployed you will need to reverse the robot.cfg/controller.cfg changes above.

■ The procedure below is a manual process that does the same. Apply this procedure only If your hub is not working as expected or it won't start. This procedure will fix it by downgrading the hub to robot.

1. Move any robot that is attached to this hub to other hubs
2. RDP/SSH to the system hosting the hub
3. Stop the Nimsoft Service Controller (/etc/init.d/nimbus stop)
4. Update any robot.cfg entry that points to the wrong hub:

hub = <new_hub> 
hubrobotname = <new_hub_robot_name> 
hubip = <new_hub_ip>

5. Save robot.cfg
6. Delete the content of the nimsoft/niscache folder
7. Rename the Nimsoft/hub folder as OLDhub

8. Open IM, go your primary hub GUI and remove this hub from the "Names Services" if the hub is listed as static route there.
9. RDP/SSH to the primary hub. Stop the Nimsoft Service Controller (/etc/init.d/nimbus stop), delete the file nimsoft/hub/hub.sds
10. Start the nimsoft service controller on the primary hub
11. Start the nimsoft service controller on the secondary hub

12. Go to USM and in the inventory node search for any entry for this robot, you may see a duplicate. Select and delete any entry for this robot. (DO NOT TICK: "prevent rediscovery" "delete alarms" "delete measurements")
13. Restart the discovery_server.

14. In IM check and see if your robot is listed under the correct hub. In the robot you may see there is a hub probe in red state/unverified. Right click > Delete it.

15. Check your DB if discovery worked properly:

select * from CM_NIMBUS_ROBOT where robot = '<name of the robot>'

The robot should show "is_hub" attribute equals to 0 (while hubs are=1)

The probes that were installed previously in the hub should be working normally.

Additional Information

Be aware that by applying these procedures visualization of QOS or Groups and Alarms may be affected because of the change of Origin or any other configuration change affected.

Related Articles/Docs:
How to delete or merge old (obsolete) origins so they no longer display in IM or UMP
UMP - No metrics available displayed for many nodes
How to move hubs/robots to a new CA UIM (Nimsoft) domain
Moving the UIM Installation
Hub Release Notes