UIM - MCS device profile overriding group profiles considerations

Products

• DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

When using device profiles added at a device level with the scope of overriding the group profiles that have been previously deployed to a group that containing the device, there might be some confusion when figuring out which configuration is taking precedence and what is actually overridden.

This KB tries to clarify a specific scenario. 

 

Use case example:

A Default Disk enhanced template has been deployed to a USM group of several robots and Disk Usage and Disk Free QOS and some alarm thresholds for this QOS have been enabled.

All robots under this group and all discovered drives (C:/, D:/, X:/ etc.) will be deployed the configuration defined the group profile configuration - as expected. 

 

If, in the above-described scenario, in the device profile, I

1. modify the Disk Usage alarm thresholds and

2. I deactivate Disk Free for a specific Drive only (Eg. C/:)

 

Will both changes override the group configuration? 

 

 

Environment

Release : UIM 20.1, 9.2 9.x

Component : UIM - CDM WITH IOSTAT, MCS any version. 

Resolution

As per MCS documentation, the device specific configuration should always override the group templates settings

However, although the device specific profile is meant to override previous existing configuration is not necessarily meant to "override all the old settings" but only the one you create in the profile.

When you create a new device profile the template is empty (so it does not show what is currently being deployed in the group profile already) So, when you create a new device profile, any change saved will correctly override the group default disk profile.

However, the MCS is not designed to “unselect” and undeploy the other configurations that are inherited by the group level just by NOT selecting the specific QOS that are instead selected on the group level. MCS will override only what is configured and not everything else that is not configured.

The answer the question raised in the description of this KB would then be that the Disk Usage alarm thresholds will be modified (correctly overriding the group profile), but if we do not select "Disk Free" QOS and do not set any threshold, this won't have any effect and the group profile will still be active for "Disk Free".

 

This would mean that, even if the device profile does NOT include "Disk Free", the Disk Free profile won't be undeployed and it will still alarm for that specific Drive (Eg. C:/)

 

A workaround to this scenario to undeploy a drive specific profile would be to create a dummy threshold for Disk Free for C:/ that does not create any alarm but that will actually override the group profile.