Atrium Webinar - Working With Reconciliation Engine

Working with Reconciliation Engine
Amol Dighe
What will be covered?
Flow of a CI
Reconciliation Identification Rules
Merging of attributes
Importing and Exporting a Job
Standard Job Vs Custom Job
RE in server group
Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc
What will be covered? .. continued
Duplicates - handling them

ITSM Filter issue in 8.1
Crashes and Hangs

Recent Enhancements in RE
Performance issues
Locale specific issue

Q&A
The Flow of a CI
Reconcile
Guidelines: Reconciliation
Standard OOTB Rules
recommended
Use Reconciliation on
Normalized data
Atrium CMDB
Product
Catalog
ADDM
Dataset
Name: ABCD1234
SerialNumber: SR9876
CIs
SCCM
Dataset
Name: ABCD1234
Name: ABCD1234
Class:ComputerSystem
Attributes: Name, SerialNumber
..
CIs
.
..
.
IMPORT
Dataset
N
O
R
M
A
L
I
Z
A
T
I
O
N
R
E
C
O
N
C
I
L
I
A
T
I
O
N
Production
Dataset
CIs

How do the rules work

Conditions under which a rule would fail

What is a multi-match error?
[ ERROR ] : Found multiple matches (instances) for class <BMC.CORE:BMC_SoftwareServer> in look-up
dataset <BMC Asset>
[ ERROR ] : for qualification <'Name' != $\NULL$ AND 'Name' = $Name$ > of group <BMC ADDM
Identify, Merge and Purge - Identification Group - BMC.ADDM - BMC_SoftwareServer> with values
[ ERROR ] : < Name = IBM HTTP Server 8.5 on someServer >
[ ERROR ] : < RelLeadClassId = NULL >
[ ERROR ] : < RelLeadInstanceId = NULL >

[ ERROR ] : < TokenId = ADDM:crFTR3XPPYGLjX5KZGJ/VQ== >

How to look deeper into a multi-match error?
[DETAILS] : Started identifying instance <class = BMC.CORE:BMC_Option, instance id = OI1C5B7825D7FD425F91B32EF909B53382>
[ TRACE ] : Found matching rule group <MyRuleGroup- BMC_Option> for class <BMC.CORE:BMC_Option> in
dataset <MyCOMPANY.IMPORT.CLS.PC>
[ TRACE ] : Applying rule < ( $AssetID$

dataset <BMC Asset>
!= $\NULL$ )
AND
( $AssetID$ = 'AssetID' ) > and looking in
[DETAILS] : Substituting values in the qualification

[DETAILS] : Replaced field <id = 210000000, name = AssetID> with value <L30258-W634-B239>
[DETAILS] : Replaced field <id = 210000000, name = AssetID> with value <L30258-W634-B239>
[ ERROR ] : Found multiple matches (instances) for class <BMC.CORE:BMC_Option> in look-up dataset
<BMC.ASSET>
[ ERROR ] : for qualification < ( $AssetID$

<MyRuleGroup - BMC_Option> with values
!= $\NULL$ )
AND
( $AssetID$ = 'AssetID' ) > of group
[ ERROR ] : < AssetID = L30258-W634-B239 >

[ ERROR ] : < RelLeadClassId = NULL >
[ ERROR ] : < RelLeadInstanceId = NULL >

Another error: The dataset ID and Recon Id combination is not unique
[ ERROR ] : Associating reconciliation identity to <OI-47E4604562664EE1892E6B4F2D7D6ED7> for instance id
<OI-10859b7fbfa745cf92ddf867060130d1> for class <BMC.CORE:BMC_Option> in dataset <SomeDataset>
[ ERROR ] : ARERR[120092] The dataset ID and Reconciliation Identity combination is not unique.
[ ERROR ] : DatasetId: SomeDataset, ReconciliationId: OI-47E4604562664EE1892E6B4F2D7D6ED7

Why is order of rules important?
10

How to write a set of rules?
Strongest rule first
Use Unique identifiers or a Combination
11

How to fix an incorrect rule set?
Look for any weak rule and fix it

Blog post:
https://communities.bmc.com/community/bmcdn/bmc_atrium_and_foundation_technologies
/bmc_atrium_cmdb/blog/2013/11/20/identifying-weak-reconciliation-identification-rules-canbe-done-with-ardriver
Re-order rules to have strongest rule first
12
Reconciliation Merging Of Attributes

How does merge precedence work?
13

14

15
How does RE know when to pickup a CI for merge
Whenever a CI is created or modified in the source dataset

an internal flag ReconciliationMergeStatus is set to Ready
To Merge
RE Merge Activity picks up those CIs for merging that are in

Ready To Merge state
16

Defer If Null
When you do not want a NULL value to overwrite a non-NULL value
17

Append to Lists
For list fields, when you want the values to get appended, instead of overwritten.
E.g. IP addresses
18
Exporting and Importing an RE Job

Why required?
Exporting a Reconciliation Job from a test setup to a production setup
How to export
19
Exporting and Importing an RE Job

How to import?
c:\Program Files\BMC Software\ARSystem\dataimporttool>
DataImport.bat -x localhost -u Demo -p Demo -o REImport.arx
-e 179 -l import.log -a 0 -D 1
Any possible issues with importing?

While copying this command there may be some whitespaces copied, and hence
the command fails without any evident reason.
20

What is a Standard Job?
21

What is a Custom Job?
22
Which to pick and when?

Advantages of either one
23
RE in Server Group
Active-Passive model
Failover of RE how it happens

Passive node RE polls every 30 seconds
[DETAILS] : ServerGroupControler bFirstIteration status 0 0 T

How to know if this is the Active/Passive server for RE

Configuration ARDBC form
24
Duplicate CIs handling them
What is a duplicate?
Cause of duplicates
Detection
Removal
How a multi-match could mean a duplicate?
25
ITSM filter that cause duplicates
ASI:BAB:CreateAssetLCS-AtriumExplorer_RecID
Creates duplicates with ITSM 8.1 patch 002.
Disable it.
26
Crashes and Hangs
Thread crash, job hang scenarios fixed
Now we have a fault tolerant Reconciliation Engine
27
Standard Identification Rules - Improvements from 8.1 SP1

For classes:
BMC_SoftwareServer
BMC_DataBase
BMC_ApplicationService
BMC_Cluster
https://kb.bmc.com/infocenter/index?page=content&id=S:KA411090
28
Log files handling and retaining history
29
Version number in arrecond.log file

[ INFO
: Reconciliation Engine: Reconciliation Engine 8.1 Service Pack 01
Should help identify hotfixes installed
30
Continuous job interval now also at job level
Global interval
31
Continuous job interval now also at job level since 8.1
For each job a different interval can be configured
32
Fault tolerance since 8.1 SP1

Ability to monitor the jobs and resume hung jobs
Retry logic for AR connection since 8.1 SP1

When AR server connection fails, RE will retry and connect when its up
33
Performance Issues fixed since 8.1
Index changes
Count * calls reduced

Disabling the progress bar OOTB for continuous jobs
34
Locale Specific Issue
With 8.1 we fixed a unicode specific issue.

"C:\Program Files\BMC
Software\AtriumCore\cmdb\server64\bin\arrecond.exe" --unicode i "C:\Program Files\BMC Software\ARSystem" -m
35
Summary
We looked at
Merging of attributes
Importing and Exporting a Job
RE in server group
Duplicates - handling them

ITSM Filter issue in 8.1
Crashes and Hangs fixed
Performance issues fixed
Locale specific issue fixed
36
Q&A
37
Feedback
Any follow up questions post on BMC DN with prefix Webinar in subject line
1. http://communities.bmc.com/communities/community/bmcdn/bmc_atrium_and_foun
dation_technologies/bmc_atrium_cmdb/bmc
2. https://communities.bmc.com/communities/community/bmcdn/bmc_atrium_and_fou
ndation_technologies/bmc_atrium_cmdb
38
Thank you!

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Working with Reconciliation Engine

What will be covered?

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

What will be covered? .. continued

Duplicates - handling them

Crashes and Hangs

Locale specific issue

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

[ ERROR ] : < RelLeadInstanceId = NULL >

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

[ TRACE ] : Applying rule < ( $AssetID$

( $AssetID$ = 'AssetID' ) > and looking in

[DETAILS] : Substituting values in the qualification

[ ERROR ] : for qualification < ( $AssetID$

( $AssetID$ = 'AssetID' ) > of group

[ ERROR ] : < AssetID = L30258-W634-B239 >

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

Strongest rule first

Use Unique identifiers or a Combination

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Identification Rules

Look for any weak rule and fix it

Re-order rules to have strongest rule first

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Merging Of Attributes

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Merging Of Attributes

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Merging Of Attributes

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Merging Of Attributes

How does RE know when to pickup a CI for merge

Whenever a CI is created or modified in the source dataset

RE Merge Activity picks up those CIs for merging that are in

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Merging Of Attributes

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Reconciliation Merging Of Attributes

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Exporting and Importing an RE Job

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Exporting and Importing an RE Job

Any possible issues with importing?

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Standard Job Vs Custom Job

Copyright 8/19/2014 BMC Software, Inc

Standard Job Vs Custom Job