What is the difference between on on demand poll and a scheduled poll in Spectrum?

Products

• CA Spectrum
• DX NetOps

Issue/Introduction

What is the difference between an on demand poll and a normal scheduled poll in Spectrum?

Environment

Release: All Supported Releases
Component: SPCCSS - SpectroSERVER Core

Resolution

An on demand poll is a poll initiated by the user where the SpectroSERVER has to perform an snmp get or getnext to retrieve and display the data.

For example, when a OneClick user right mouse clicks on a model and selects the Poll menu pick:

Or when a OneClick user selects a model and opens a subview in the Information tab that displays external attributes. For example, the General Information subview for most device model types. The System Up Time, System Name, Contact and Location are all external attributes from the system mib.

 

A "normal" scheduled poll is when Spectrum proactively polls for the attribute values on a scheduled bases, normally at the poll interval set on the model. For example, for most snmp managed devices, Spectrum polls the ifNumber, ifStackLastChange and ifTableLastChange attributes at the configured poll interval defined by the Polling_Interval attribute id 0x10071. 

We can view which attributes are configured to be polled at the normal poll interval by selecting them in the Attributes tab and viewing the flags of the attribute. If Polled is highlighted then that attribute is polled at the normal poll interval. 

 

Other examples of scheduled polls is the information in the Thresholds and Watches subview.

When thresholds are enabled, that will poll the attributes to compute the thresholds at the normal poll interval.

When a Watch is created, the user can configure the watch to poll at a specific interval. A Watch poll is separate from the normal poll interval.