Smarts IP: Why some IP addresses are not discovered?

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


There are some IP address not getting discovered which we know is being used.

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Cause

SMARTS IP basically depends on the following 2 tables to create IP addresses:

IpAddressIfIndex { ".1.3.6.1.2.1.4.34.1.3" } 
IpAddressIPV4IfIndex { ".1.3.6.1.2.1.4.34.1.3.1" } 

Out of these 2 OIDs, the .34 table (IpAddressIPV4IfIndex) is given priority as the (ipAddrTable) {1.3.6.1.2.1.4.20.1.1 } .20 table is deprecated and not displayed. We still support querying the .20 table only if the .34 (IpAddressIPV4IfIndex) table does not have any data to support other than older devices that only populates a value in .20 table.

From running a SNMP query, we can see the following values populated in the above said tables:

SNMP QUERY STARTED *****
1: ipAdEntIfIndex.111.22.333.444 (integer) 3
2: ipAdEntIfIndex.555.66.777.888 (integer) 6
SNMP QUERY FINISHED ***** 
...
SNMP QUERY STARTED *****
1: ipAddressIfIndex.1.4.555.66.777.888 (integer) 6 [6]
SNMP QUERY FINISHED ***** 

Now, if you see the .34 (IpAddressIPV4IfIndex) table is populated with one IP address and .20 (ipAddrTable) table is populated with 2 IP address and as said above, we see that .34 (IpAddressIPV4IfIndex) is populated and hence SMARTS goes ahead and ignores the .20 (ipAddrTable) table entries and creates the IP address that are part of the .34 (IpAddressIPV4IfIndex) table. This is something that device vendor has to explain on why the same set of IP address that was populated on the deprecated OID (i.e .20 (ipAddrTable) ) is not populated in .34 (IpAddressIPV4IfIndex) table.

Resolution

From SMARTS IP perspective, if this needs to be address, we have a way, there is a parameter as described as follows:
Usedot34Addresses :

1. This flag is introduced to selectively skip .1.3.6.1.2.1.4.34
2. for getting IP addresses.
3. Default Value TRUE
4. Usedot34Addresses TRUE

dot34ExclusionPattern:

1. This flag should be used in combination with the "Usedot34Addresses".
2. When the flag "Usedot34Addresses" is set to FALSE, then add the device SysOIDs to the below attribute separated by "|" (pipe) symbol.
3. For those Sysoids that are part of this attribute, SMARTS InChargeServer will not poll the .34 table (i.e ipAddressTable) and query the .20 table (ipAddrTable) to
4. identify the interface index that has an IP address configured.
   dot34ExclusionPattern .1.3.6.1.4.1.6141.1.84

In order to discover all the IP address that are part of .20 (ipAddrTable) table, set the parameter for dot34ExclusionPattern and add the sysoid of the device that has issues. All details of the flags are fairly self-explanatory.
This functionality is available starting patch 9 for IP 9.4.2.

Additional Information

You must use the tpmgr-param.conf file located in the ../smarts/local/conf/discovery directory, not in the base ../smarts/conf/discovery directory.