How to exclude specific device from SNMP polling in NFA

Products

• CA Network Flow Analysis (NetQos / NFA)

Issue/Introduction

While using Network Flow Analysis, you may encounter issues with SNMP polling devices. Previously with NFA, if you could not SNMP a device you would eventually see your device get it self into a state of RebootRefresh as NFA did require SNMP connectivity for netflow devices to work properly. Starting with NFA 21.2.2, we can add specific devices to an exclusion list in the database on the harvester server.

In older NFA versions, you could only turn on "IgnoreReboots" globally, and that would affect all routers. This allows you to exclude specific devices and still allow NFA to poll other devices.

Environment

Release : 21.2.2+

Component : Network Flow Analysis

Cause

Certain devices such as VMware hosts or other devices where you just may not have SNMP connectivity may need exemptions from the SNMP connectivity requirement due to software limitations or network restrictions.

Resolution

These steps will only work on NFA 21.2.2 and Up. Please upgrade to at least that version first.

1. RDP to the harvester the devices will be pointing to.
2. Gather a list of the devices which you don't want to be SNMP polled that will be sent to this particular harvester.
3. Open a CMD prompt and enter:
   1. mysql harvester -unetqos -pnetqos
   2. update  parameter_descriptions set DefaultValue='x.x.x.x' where Parameter='ignoreRebootDevices';
      
      *Substitute x.x.x.x with the device IP's you want excluded.                e.g xx.xx.xx.xx1

*If multiple devices having the issue then add it separated by ","       e.g  'xx.xx.xx.xx1,127.0.0.1'

      4. Once the above steps are completed, please restart the CA MySQL Service on the NFA harvester for the settings to apply.

Additional Information

See the following KB for information on how to get devices out of "RebootRefresh" if they are already in RebootRefresh and rejecting data:

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleId=108068

 

In 9.3.6 and later you can run the following commands on the Harvesters to reset the state of the router to allow it to collect data again:

mysql -unetqos -pnetqos harvester
update routers set pollState='InitialPoll', stateretry=0, reboottime=0 where pollstate ='RebootRefresh';