sdnContainsModelNameString Attribute does not populate Organisation for Meraki Routers

Products

• CA Spectrum
• CA Virtual Network Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Spectrum is integrated Virtual Network Assurance (VNA) and using the Meraki Plugin.

It appears that the Organizations Hierarchy is missing for the SDN_ROUTERS model. For Meraki routers, the sdnContainsModelNameString attribute (0x133e4) only displays sites.

It shows correctly for integrated and SDN_Switches.

For example: 

For SDN_Switches, it shows:
SDN Manager:AU_Meraki:Organizations:<organisations>:<sites>:

However, for SDN_ROUTERS it only shows:
AU_Meraki:Sites:<sites>

Environment

DX NetOps Spectrum 
DX NetOps Virtual Network Assurance 

Cause

After examining the code we found that for appliances such as SDN_Routers there are two hierarchies. One is from Organizations and the other is from Sites. Because of this, there are two SDN_CONTAINS relations forming. Whenever there are two associations with different hierarchies, the sdnContainsModelNameString may populate any one of them and hence we are seeing a sites hierarchy at times. But for Access Points, we have only one SDN_CONTAINS relation and the sdnContainsModelNameString attribute is populating correctly.
 
After discussing internally, we felt the displaying of SDN_ROUTERS and Meraki routers under the Sites hierarchy was not giving any additional value and in this case it should be enough to only show the Organizations hierarchy. This way sdnContainsModelNameString will always populate correctly. A fix will be built to implement this.

Resolution

The fix for this has been included in the Spectrum 23.3.6 release.

Resolved Issues 23.3.6

Additional Information

With this fix, Spectrum modifies the existing behavior so that sdnContainsModelNameString now populates the hierarchy from the organization/technology_group, and not from sdn_sites.
To achieve this behavior, set the ignore_sites_for_sdncontains parameter in the .vnmrc file to true. If the value is set to false or the parameter is omitted from the .vnmrc file, then the existing behavior is considered (which is also the default behavior).
If you want to have a consistent behavior for the sdnContainsModelNameString attribute, then set ignore_sites_for_sdncontains to true.