Incremental discovery operation and guidelines

During an incremental discovery with incremental topology split, the Topology Split Manager discovers topology updates and distributes those updates to the IP Availability Managers. Topology updates consist of any of the following:

• Devices that have been added to the managed IP network since the last Topology Split Manager discovery

• Devices that have been decommissioned (removed) from the managed IP network since the last Topology Split Manager discovery

• Configuration changes that have occurred in the managed IP network since the last Topology Split Manager discovery

  New devices can be added to the Topology Split Manager as seed entries in a seed file or placed on the Pending Devices list of the Topology Split Manager. Decommissioned devices can be removed from the Topology Split Manager through the Global Console and the Delete command or by calling the VMware Smart Assurance remove() method.

  VMware envisions that customers learn about topology updates through their automated service order provisioning systems, and use cron (or sm_sched scheduler) and custom scripts that do the following at a regular interval:

• Extract from the provisioning system a list of devices that have been added to the system since the previous query and write that list to a table, say AddList.

• Extract from the provisioning system a list of devices that have been decommissioned (removed) from the system since the previous query and write that list to a table, say RemoveList.

• Call TopoSplit_Manager::TopoSplit-Manager::addPending() for each device in AddList to add the devices in AddList to the Topology Split Manager’s Pending Devices list.

• Call remove() for each device in RemoveList to remove the devices (and their components and connections) in RemoveList from the Topology Split Manager’s repository.

• Invoke the following command to initiate a Topology Split Manager pending discovery:

                 dmctl -s <TSM name> invoke  ICF_TopologyManager::ICF-TopologyManager 
                 
                    discoverPending
              

  In response, the Topology Split Manager performs a pending discovery to discover the devices on its Pending Devices list, which triggers an incremental topology split. During the incremental topology split, the Topology Split Manager performs the following actions:

• Assigns the new devices to the appropriate IP Availability Managers and calls ICF_TopologyManager::ICF-TopologyManager::addPending() to add the new devices to the appropriate IP Availability Managers’ Pending Devices list.

• Calls remove() for each decommissioned device to remove the decommissioned devices (and their components and connections) from the topologies of the appropriate IP Availability Managers.