Duplicate Reducer Discovery Extension - TADDM/taddm-wiki GitHub Wiki

Duplicate Reducer Discovery Extension v2.1

Release Information

Product: Duplicate Reducer Discovery Extension v2.1
Release Number: 2.1 (beta)
Release Date: September, 2018

Description

Duplicate ComputerSystem CIs in TADDM can be an issue. This issue specifically affects Sun and HP-UX discovery because it is difficult and in some cases impossible to discover the serial number for these platforms. When the serial number is not discovered, often the IP and MAC address end up being unique identifiers used through the signature attribute. When an IP address or network card changes, the signature thus changes and causes duplicate ComputerSystem CIs in TADDM. VMware VMs moving around can also cause duplicates if the VMware admin does not use vMotion to move VMs. This causes the serial to change and TADDM to discover the target system as a new VM.

This solution for reducing duplicates relies on a tag file remaining on the target systems between discoveries. The value in this tag file, along with the host name can then be used as naming rule for the discovered CI. Since the introduction of OpenID generic naming rules in TADDM 7.3, custom naming rules can be used to identify CIs. This solution uses a combination of a random number (located in the tag file that resides on the target system) and a host name to uniquely identify target systems.

*** IMPORTANT NOTES ***

The location of the tag file will differ by platform, where <name> is the discovered host name of the target system.

Windows: C:\.discoverytag-<name>
Non-Windows: /tmp/.discoverytag-<name> and ~/.discoverytag-<name>

The discovery service account will need read/write access to these locations in order for the extension to properly run. Warnings are generated during discovery if access issues occur or there are is not enough discovered information to continue. If the tag file is cleared out at any time this will affect the functioning of this solution and there is a risk of introducing duplicate CIs.

Installation Notes

System Requirements

  • TADDM 7.3.0+ (tested on 7.3.0.3+)

Prerequisite

  • It is recommended to do a database backup before using this discovery extension against a large scope set in case problems occur
  • It is recommended to first implement in a development environment and test
  • If running script-based discovery for Linux/Windows VMs this extension will not execute. Extensions do not execute during script-based discovery.

Installation

  1. Open the TADDM discovery management console, on the side bar click the Computer Systems icon. For the WindowsComputerSystemTemplate, LinuxComputerSystemTemplate, and any other templates you wish to apply, ensure that they are set to enabled (set to enabled if not).

  2. Copy dup_reducer.py to the dist/etc/templates/commands/extension-scripts directory.

  3. Under dist/etc/templates/commands, edit WindowsComputerSystemTemplate, LinuxComputerSystemTemplate, and any other templates you wish to apply by adding the following line to the end:

    SCRIPT:etc/templates/commands/extension-scripts/dup_reducer.py

Note: You do NOT need to restart TADDM for this to take affect.

Manifest This release consists of the following items:

  • README (this file)
  • Jython sensor code (dup_reducer.py)

Known Problems and Workarounds

None

Troubleshooting

None

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