Two load balancers with shared MAC address are overwriting each other in the topology

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When two load balancers that share the same MAC address (shared MAC) are added in a Smarts IP environment, the load balancers will over-write each other when discovered into the same Smarts IP topology.
To avoid this condition, Smarts Documentation [Devices sharing a common MAC address were overwritten/deleted] recommends the following: 

1. Edit the DISCOVERY.import file located under BASEDIR/smarts/conf/icf directory for the invalidMACPattern attribute to include the MAC address
2. Set the RigorousMACTest in the tpmgr-param.conf located under BASEDIR/smarts/conf/discovery to TRUE.  
3. Start a fresh new domain. 

Article explains if it possible to apply the invalidMACPattern attribute without starting a fresh domain?

Environment

Smarts 10.1.X

Resolution

It is possible to use the invalidMACPattern without starting a fresh new domain.
To do this, use dmctl to edit/insert into the invalidMACPattern as follows:

./dmctl -s <IP domain name> put ICF_TopologyManager::ICF-TopologyManager::invalidMACPattern "<Pattern>"

Example

• Default invalidMACPattern:

dmctl -s Twincast -b apollo:5959 get ICF_TopologyManager::ICF-TopologyManager::invalidMACPattern
{ "000021000000|0000000100*|*0000000000|FFFFFFFFFFFF" "00000C07AC*" }

• To insert into the invalidMACPattern:

dmctl -s Twincast -b apollo:5959 put ICF_TopologyManager::ICF-TopologyManager::invalidMACPattern "000021000000|0000000100*|*0000000000|FFFFFFFFFFFF" "00000C07AC*" "ABCDEFGHIJ"
{ "000021000000|0000000100*|*0000000000|FFFFFFFFFFFF" "00000C07AC*"  "ABCDEFGHIJ" }

Note the following about the above:

• If you do not include the existing pattern as part of what you wanted to insert, it will overwrite the existing pattern.
• After running the above, discover the devices into your topology, and you should be able to discover them without the need for a fresh repository.
• You should still edit the DISCOVERY.import file for new domain start up.