Unexplained devices on the Pending List after full discovery; Discovery error: No Response from SNMP Agent; IP addresses not found anywhere in the topology

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

After full discovery, IP addresses are listed on the pending list with either timeout or connection refused errors.

During discovery using either the Add agent or seedfile, some IPs are automatically added in the pending list.

Environment

SMARTS - 10.1.X

Cause

This issue can occur with any modular device like Cisco 6509 switches. 

Modular devices contain modules identified in the cefcIntelliModuleIPAddr MIB.

Smarts IP is trying to discover all the modules contained on this device and creates ComposedOf relationship.

 

The problem is that the configuration of the switch allows Smarts IP to discover it, but the configuration for the internal modular card (like a firewall) does not. Since the SNMP Agent is not responding for these IPs, they are added to pending list with No Response from SNMP Agent error.

Resolution

When Smarts IP discovers this Switch, one of the discovered OIDs in the device returns these IP addresses as modules within that device. Once these modules are discovered via the SNMP MIB on the device, the IP addresses are added to the discovery queue. Once an IP address is added to the discovery pending queue, Smarts IP will poll the device using ICMP and SNMP.
 

Adding ipExcludeList entries in <SMARTS>/local/conf/discovery/discovery.conf is the only way to avoid discovering devices.

ipExcludeList functionality in Smarts IP allow users to define exclude patterns to control which IP address to be included in the topology. If an IP address matches any of the specified patterns, the IP address is not represented in the topology.

For example,

ipExcludeList += "<#.#.#.*>"

Add the appropriate addresses to the ipExcludeList to ensure they are not added to the pending list during discovery.