Alarms generated on a device although the device is in maintenance. How to evaluate the maintenance criteria

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance
• Network Observability

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• How does Smarts set InMaint = TRUE
• Generate a list of devices that are in the Smarts Maintenance table
• Troubleshoot use-cases where devices in maintenance are notified with InMaint=FALSE. 

Environment

Smarts-10.1.X , 24.3.X

Resolution

As per the ics-nl-processing.asl and the ics-event-processing.asl, Smarts checks for two basic parameters on  ICS_InMaint :: ICS-InMaint object

//check if the object is inMaint, if yes, make InMaintenance = TRUE;

    if (!inMaintHandle->isNull() && inMaintHandle->isInMaint && (inMaintHandle->isInMaintTable(instance) || inMaintHandle->isInMaintTable(inName))  ) {
                eventObj->InMaintenance = TRUE;
                eventObj->addAuditEntry("Maint", "InMaint", "Device in maintenance");
                if (debug) {
                        print("Setting InMaintenance TRUE for: " . eventObj->Name);
                }
    }

This can be evaluated live by the following dmctl command as well with crucial fields highlighted in blue and yellow:

./dmctl -s <SAM> get ICS_InMaint::ICS-InMaint | tee

Properties of ICS_InMaint::ICS-InMaint:
    CreationClassName = ICS_InMaint
          Description =
          DisplayName =
         InMaintTable = { { <Device Name>, <Device Class>, <InMaint Until> }, { <Device Name>, <Device Class>, <InMaint Until> }, ...etc }
        LastChangedAt = 0
                 Name = ICS-InMaint
          ServiceName =
         isBIMRunning = TRUE
            isEnabled = TRUE
            isInMaint = TRUE
        lastIsEnabled = TRUE

Additional Information

Please raise a case with Broadcom Support if the alarms continue to be notified with InMaint=FALSE even if they exist on the Maintenance table.