SNTC portal results are inconsistent from day to day

[Benjamin Bartsch]

When I log into the SNTC portal I get different inventory results from day to day.  Most days, our portal shows no information other than just the chassis.  Every once in a while, we do see what looks like full results including chassis, modules, fans, and power supplies.

I've inherited this collector and setup so I'm wondering if there is a config issue somewhere.  Do we really need to be doing a full discovery, data collection, and data upload every day?  Our collector is configured to do these tasks daily.

From my research on these forums of other people with the issue of data not appearing in the portal, I've found that the general answer was that the data collection task did not complete successfully.  I'm wondering how this could be the issue for this case since we do get successful results on the portal every once in a while.  I can also perform a full SNMPwalk against our network devices in the collector.

Any ideas?

I've attached a screenshot of our collection delta between a 'good' collection and a 'bad' collection.

[jumin]

Hey Benjamin Bartsch,

It is possible that the collections/uploads coming in each day are changing the data.  I would recommend changing the schedule for the collections and uploads to only come in once a week.  If you have a discovery job scheduled, this does not have to be ran often as once a device is discovered, it is discovered.  A scheduled discovery job for an IP range or via protocol can be done and I would recommend maybe once a month depending on how frequent devices come in and out of your network.

Thanks,
Justin

[Benjamin Bartsch]

Jumin - thanks for the ideas.  I did change our discovery to run yearly and the upload to run monthly.  The network doesn't change that much and we are supposed to be manually adding new devices as part of the install process.

I did find one interesting thing though.  Today's daily discovery job already ran at 1050am MDT.  It looks like as part of that discovery, it uploaded the collection to the SNTC portal which then correctly processed it - we see chassis, modules, fans, etc.  Upon further inspection, the daily data upload (a separate job than the daily discovery job) runs at 1am MDT.  It also uploads collected data to SNTC which is processed, but is missing the info other than chassis.

I'm trying to understand why this is happening.  I have 2 questions on the jobs:

1. Daily discovery (now changed to yearly) - does this job also collect information and upload to SNTC portal?

2. Daily collection upload (now changed to monthly) - does this job actually collect information from the discovered devices? Why would this data be different than the discovery job?

Thanks for the assistance.

[Benjamin Bartsch]

I've uploaded the results from the upload processing tab.  The checks are the correct data and are uploaded after the daily discovery job.  The exes are the incorrect data and are uploaded after the daily upload job.

[jumin · Accepted solution]

Hey Benjamin Bartsch,

No, the discovery job does not collect or upload data.  The discovery specifically only identifies if a device is in fact at an IP, it essentially pings it and identifies that this node will be collected on.

Are you sure you were looking at a scheduled discovery job and not the collection job?  If the default collection profile is used, this job kicks of an initial quick discovery on all known IPs within the managed device list, collects device data from these IPs, and then pushes the upload to the portal.

I would cancel the lone upload job/profile.  Only use the default collection profile to collect and upload data.  I would advise making this schedule to go once a week.

Thanks,
Justin

[Benjamin Bartsch]

Jumin - you are right.  I was looking at the data collection not the device discovery job.  I've made the following changes:

1. Data collection job (Applications - Collection Rules - Manage Data Collection Profile) - runs once per week on Mondays at 1050am MDT.

2. Upload job (Applications - Collection Rules - Manage Upload Profile) - deleted the daily job (no jobs present there now).

I think that second 'upload job' was the problem.  We'll see what happens on Monday.

Thanks for the guidance.

-ben