Smarts IP: Can Smarts IP monitor a hostname with a dynamic IP Address?

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


Can Smarts IP monitor hostname with dynamic IP Address?
How to add hostname with dynamic IP Address into Smarts IP

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Resolution

The following example illustrates how Smarts IP monitors hostname and IP Address during device discovery and the impact of dynamic change of IP address:

1. Device1 is being discovered through seed name (device-01), and the DNS resolves this name to IP address as X.
2. Smarts starts probing this device through the IP address X. On receiving the first IP address from the device (for example, X itself), Smarts updates this IP address in the SNMP AgentAddress field.
3. On polling the MIB II data of the device, Smarts will recognize that there are some more IP addresses (for example, Y and Z), and it will update the AgentAddressList with X, Y and Z.
4. Now the monitoring of this device will happen through the IP address X.
5. If the dynamic IP address X is changed to A, now Smarts would know only X, Y and Z as its reachable IP addresses. It would not be aware of the IP address A for the device.

The design of Smarts is to monitor the device only by means of incrementing the IP address present in the AgentAddress and AgentAddressList. It cannot be monitored by means of the device name. There are two ways to overcome this:

• Rediscover the device manually so that Smarts updates the newly changed IP address for monitoring.
• Customize the environment using a separate, custom-written daemon driver that runs rediscovery of that particular device whenever the device's IP changes.

To accomplish the the customization referenced in the second point above, contact your Account Manager who in turn will engage the Professional Services team.