DX NetOps Flow 23.3.5 Flow Processor NBAR AppMap Description Error

Products

• Network Observability

Issue/Introduction

While using DX NetOps Flow, you may notice the worker DX Flow processor restarts every few minutes with logs are showing following error:

2024-02-22T09:25:05.118769380+01:00 java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "String.length()" because the return value of "com.broadcom.netops.flow.common.nbar2.model.Nbar2Record.getDescription()" is null 2024-02-22T09:25:05.118773127+01:00 at com.broadcom.netops.flow.processor.service.appmapping.AppMappingDbAccess.lambda$merge$0(AppMappingDbAccess.java:66) ~[classes/:na] 2024-02-22T09:25:05.118793351+01:00 at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.lambda$batchUpdate$5(JdbcTemplate.java:1131) ~[spring-jdbc-6.0.13.jar:6.0.13] 2024-02-22T09:25:05.118796969+01:00 at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.execute(JdbcTemplate.java:648) ~[spring-jdbc-6.0.13.jar:6.0.13] 2024-02-22T09:25:05.118800080+01:00 at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.execute(JdbcTemplate.java:691) ~[spring-jdbc-6.0.13.jar:6.0.13] 2024-02-22T09:25:05.118803289+01:00 at org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(JdbcTemplate.java:1125) ~[spring-jdbc-6.0.13.jar:6.0.13] 2024-02-22T09:25:05.118807029+01:00 at com.broadcom.netops.flow.processor.service.appmapping.AppMappingDbAccess.merge(AppMappingDbAccess.java:61) ~[classes/:na]

Environment

DX NetOps Flow 23.3.5
OS: Kubernetes

Cause

It appears that an "incoming" app mapping doesn't have the "description" field set, what's causing that flow-processor issue to surface. In each NetOps Flow aggregation window (default is 5 minutes) there is at least one "incoming" app mapping without the description field set for those devices, which results in the flow-processor issue (Defect DE593029). This issue can cause the NetOps Flow to fail to process flow data from some exporters/devices (due to matching app mappings with no description set), but it can succeed for others exporters/devices.

Resolution

We have a fix under review for this issue, and it will be available in NetOps 23.3.8.