What is the correct procedure for changing the IP address of a device running Enterprise Management?

Products

• CA Unicenter NSM

Issue/Introduction

Description:

To avoid problems when changing the IP address of CA NSM servers or agents, this solution describes the correct procedure when performing IP address changes on NSM servers.

Solution:

Unicenter Enterprise Management (Event, Workload, Security, and so forth) does not rely on IP address when it executes the gethostbyname() calls to get the IP address of a node. As long as hostname remains the same and name resolution is functioning, there should be no problems with IP address changes on a Unicenter Enterprise Management (EM) server. However, some considerations must be taken into account:

By default, transport will cache names and IP addresses from hosts that it has previously communicated with. This saves time instead of executing the name resolution APIs for every new request. This could also create a problem because the IP address change would not be effective immediately for CCI.

There are two ways to make CCI aware of the IP address change:

1. Turn off the transport cache by executing the following command:
   
   ccicntrl setenv CCI_QUE_NOCACHE 1
   Recycle Transport before this change can take effect.
   
   With this change in place, transport will be executing gethostbyname() calls every time it sends a message to a host.
   
   Note: Be aware that this method may create a performance problem on the manager if it is connected to many Remote Agents.
   
   
2. Recycle the manager after changing the IP address of a CA NSM server (or the manager itself).
   
   Before restarting CA NSM, it is also recommended to flush the DNS cache on the manager and any agent computers that got assigned a new IP address (using the command ipconfig /flushdns).
   
   Note: This solution will not affect CCI performance.

Note: From the Agent Technology perspective, if the server has been discovered from a DSM:
It is necessary to completely delete from 2D Map the host with its children and rediscover them using the command dscvrbe -7 HOSTxxx. Then recycle DSM in order to monitor the host with the new IP address.

Environment

Release:
Component: CCSCC