Smarts SAM: Server or device name appears twice (in both lower and UPPER case) in Smarts SAM topology

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:




Server or device name appears twice (in both lower and UPPER case) in Smarts Service Assurance Manager (Smarts SAM) topology

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Cause

The issue occurs because of a conflict between Smarts IP hostname and DNS name received in Smarts OI. When Smarts IP discovers a system, it sets the SystemName attribute derived from hostname of the discovered system. When Smarts OI creates a local host object, it assigns the DNS name to the SystemName attribute, as there is no way to know hostname. The name of the same devices created as objects in OI are not from underlying domains.

Example
Consider the following example related to this issue:

• A device has been discovered in IP using the name QA-W2K3E, which has created a Smarts SAM topology object/element with this name. 
• A trap comes to Smarts OI for this device with the IP address
• The SystemName attribute that Smarts OI received from the DNS is qa-w2k3e 

In this case, there would be two entries in the Smarts SAM topology (QA-W2K3E and qa-w2k3e).

Resolution

This is a known limitation of the Smarts architecture and cannot be addressed at the application level. To address this issue will require maintaining synchronization between the hostname in Smarts IP and the DNS name in the network.