Network connection between devices is deleted during discovery when one device goes down and becomes unresponsive

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

• Network connection between devices is deleted during Smarts IP discovery when one device goes down and becomes unresponsive
• Cannot see network connection between devices when one device is down and unresponsive after Smarts IP discovery
• When device goes down and unresponsive, the network connection is lost in the Smarts IP topology upon re-discovery

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Cause

Considering Device A and Device B as an example, this behavior occurs in Smarts IP as follows:

Scenario 1:

Device A goes down but connection is not lost between Device A and Device B. If only Device A goes down, the connections will not be removed.

Scenario 2:

Device A goes down and the connection is lost between Device A and Device B. In this scenario, the following occurs: 

1. Device A goes down.
2. After doing a discoverAll, Smarts will discover both Devices A and B.
3. At this point, Device A is down and so not reachable, so the connection is not affected by Device A discovery.
4. However, Device B is also discovered with discoverAll, so the connection will be removed because Device B does not have information about its connection with Device A.

Resolution

No fix is available or required as Smarts IP is functioning as designed. When a device has lost its connection and a discovery (discoverAll) is run, the network connection between the devices are removed.