Vmware probe templates are not applying to all systems - using Regex to filter for system computer names

Products

• DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

I want to apply different configurations to servers in my VMware environment. I began with one template with several filters under the Virtual Server/Guest Disk node and after not getting the results I wanted, I created an additional template with the desired filter, but I am still not getting the desired results.

Environment

UIM 8.x, 9.x

Vmware probe 6.83

Cause

This type of problem is difficult to diagnose without the proper background information from the customer. In this scenario the customer was using Regex to filter for system computer names.

- configuration 1: Computer Name = | Regex=^(svp|svmp).*

- configuration 2: Computer Name = | Regex=^(sv(?!p|mp).*)

Config 1 worked fine, while config 2 was failing to apply to any systems that matched the criteria in the regex filter.

We established that this was not the problem after explicitly using the filter: Computer Name = | "actual_machine_host_name", as this did not work either.

Resolution

• Computer name is something we get from the vsphere API when VMWare tools is installed. If VMWare tools is not installed, we don’t have a computer name, and the filter won’t apply to that machine.This is regardless of using filters like regex, or starts with, contains, ends with, etc. It will just never work with any filter that starts with "Computer Name" if vmware tools is not installed on your guests.

 

• The workaround is to use the term "Label" instead of "Computer Name" when defining your filter. The match criteria in the next field does not need any special modification aside from what you are normally familiar with.

 

Additional Information

It would be best practice to make sure vmware tools is installed on all your guests in your environments as CA UIM Support cannot guarantee that additional problems other than missing Computer Name or IP Address will be unavailable to the vmware probe device/metric collection process.

There is also no report available to determine if a specific probe config has been applied from a holistic point of view. Making sure vmware tools is installed will prevent additional tasks later on.