Smarts NCM: Can I change a device name displayed in Smarts NCM?

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


Can I change device name displayed in Smarts Network Configuration Manager (Smarts NCM)?

Device has been discovered in Smarts NCM but the device name is not what is desired
Device has redundant names in Smarts NCM

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - NCM

Cause

The above issue may be seen for the following reasons:

• There are redundant devices that have both a hostname up-time as well as a failover cluster up-time that are seen in the output of a show version command on the device itself
• Device was discovered without using SNMP
• Device IP resolves to the incorrect name using DNS look up or NAT Address

Resolution

Smarts NCM has an option to use an alias column rather than device name. This column can be used to give the device an alias to identify the device. If using the alias column does not deliver the desired result, the device must be rediscovered using SNMP or updated via a config pull including device identity.

• SNMP pulls a specific OID value for hostname rather than relying on a regex match from the show version command. 
• Also ensure that the device IP resolves correctly though DNS as well as NAT address if applicable. Otherwise NCM will display the name the IP resolves to if SNMP is not used fro discovery.