After your network has been discovered, you might want to keep in your topology certain managed devices that are not yet certified by VMware Corporation. Because no certification is available for these devices, the IP Manager discovery process uses generic SNMP MIB-II drivers to discover the devices, and models them as instances of the Node class. You can, however, add such devices to a field certification file so that the IP Manager properly recognizes these devices.

You can add managed devices to the field certification file, oid2type_Field.conf, which is located in the BASEDIR/smarts/conf/discovery directory. User-made changes to this file will not be overwritten by subsequent IP Management Suite Service Packs.

Field-based certifications are intended for certifying simple devices, or for certifying devices that are clones of devices that have already been certified by VMware Corporation. Only VMware field engineers, partners, or knowledgeable customers should add device entries to the oid2type_Field.conf file.

Upon reading this section, you will know how to create field-based certifications. You will also know how to read and parse the certifications in any of the oid2type configuration files that are shipped with the IP Management Suite. All oid2type files are located in the BASEDIR/smarts/conf/discovery directory.