Managing overlapping elements from separate underlying domains

A Global Manager collects topology information from multiple underlying domains. In some cases, two or more of these domains can manage elements with the same name. Two such examples are IP networks, which are named using the network address, and partitions which are assigned names by the underlying domain.

For example, a service provider might use a private IP network address, such as 10.0.0.0, to provide IP addresses to different customers. When the same range of IP addresses are assigned to multiple customers, different topology elements may have the same IP address, and thus the same name.

Partitions are created and named by IP Availability Manager. All IP Availability Managers use the same convention to name partitions. If the topologies of two domain managers each include partitions, it is possible that one or more of the partitions have the same name, as defined by the Name attribute. The IP Manager User Guide provides more information about partitions.

By default, the Global Manager treats elements with the same name from different underlying domains as a single instance, consolidating the relationships and attributes of the two elements to a single topological instance. The values for the attributes are taken from the underlying domain that performs the most recent topology synchronization.

You can, however, configure the Global Manager to manage elements of the same name from different domains as distinct elements. By specifying a tag for one or both of the underlying domains, the Global Manager will create two separate topology elements, each containing the attributes and relationships of the respective objects in the underlying domains. The tag that you specify is appended to the name of the objects in the tagged domain and displayed in the Global Console.

To tag managed elements, you need to complete two tasks:

• Specify a tag.

• Specify a matching pattern that will match the IP addresses and partitions to be tagged.