Thanks. That's more-or-less the behavior we reverse engineered reading the logs. Nice to know your approach to forcing a scan. I think we definitely want to minimize chances of detecting a machine one day but not getting the VM hierarchy till the next day resulting in PVU calculations that are too high.
Original Message:
Sent: Thu August 17, 2023 01:04 PM
From: Oktawian Powązka
Subject: Incomplete virtualization hierarchy out the gate
Hello Brant,
I'd like to dispel any doubts on this...
There are two timers used for Local VM Manager setup:
- 30 minutes determines interval between the consecutive retrievals of data from VM managers,
- 12 hours determines interval of how often the scan results is being saved in VM Tool upload directory if the subsequent scans have the same results.
This underlined part is essential : ...if the subsequent scans have the same results
It basically means that if there are no changes in the virtual topology, the scan results are not transferred to VM Tool upload directory before that 12 hours timer.
Thus, you will see far fewer scans upon every 30 minutes interval.
You have to wait 12 hours timer to see ALL results in the VM Tool upload directory.
If you want to change / force the scan results upload you can do this in two ways:
- Decrease the 'vmm_data_transfer_period' parameter (found in vmmmainconf.properties file),
- Delete the '..\VMMAN\cache\status.xml' file & restart VM Tool ('vmman.<sh/bat> -stop' & 'vmman.<sh/bat> -runwithoutservice').
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Thank you,
Oktawian
Oktawian Powązka, L3 Support
IBM License Metric Tool
Original Message:
Sent: Wed August 16, 2023 10:35 AM
From: Brant Gurganus
Subject: Incomplete virtualization hierarchy out the gate
Hi Andrei, that's the issue: The documentation says 30 minutes. And there's no way to force those to my understanding. However, the VM Manager file processing during imports implies far fewer scans than one every 30 minutes. What's the discrepancy here?
It seems like (1) It discards imported data from a VM Manager if it doesn't match to data from a collector. This guarantees missing data for a new machine for up to the documented 30 minutes.
(2) The 30 minute interval scans are happening far less often than they should be.
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Brant Gurganus
Original Message:
Sent: Wed August 16, 2023 10:27 AM
From: Andrei Ionescu
Subject: Incomplete virtualization hierarchy out the gate
Hello,
VM manager data is collected from VM managers by the VM Manager Tool every 30 minutes and it's imported into ILMT database every 24 hours (during the scheduled data import).
Please check the following doc:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/license-metric-tool?topic=data-local-vm-manager-tool
As to that VM with No VM Manager Data, you can use this guide to troubleshoot the issue at hand:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/license-metric-tool?topic=scshw-troubleshooting-outdated-vm-manager-data-no-vm-manager-data-statuses
Thank you.
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Andrei Ionescu
IBM
Bucharest
Original Message:
Sent: Wed August 16, 2023 10:21 AM
From: Brant Gurganus
Subject: Incomplete virtualization hierarchy out the gate
We did another import later and it showed it imported a VM Manager scan file:
2023-08-16 14:12:51 +0000 (+0:00:02.739) INFO: [ILMTCore] (ImportThread) com.ibm.ilmt.core.ILMTCoreVMMan::printStatistics::STATISTICS: 1 files from 1 VM Managers were processed. Processed clusters: 1, skipped clusters: 0, processed hosts: 1, skipped hosts: 3, processed guests: 1 (includes 0 guests without VM hierarchy changes and 0 without any changes), skipped guests: 8, duplicated guests: 0
So since the setup, that's 4 files it has imported in 16 hours or more since the VM Manager connection got set up. My understanding is that VM Manager scan should happen every 30 minutes by our current/default configuration but it seems to be happening less often.
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Brant Gurganus
Original Message:
Sent: Wed August 16, 2023 10:13 AM
From: Brant Gurganus
Subject: Incomplete virtualization hierarchy out the gate
The midnight import when the VM manager switched from pending to OK did indicate 3 files processed but 2 skipped clusters. What would make it skip a cluster?
023-08-16 04:00:26 (+0:00:02.459) INFO: [ILMTCore] (ImportThread) com.ibm.ilmt.core.ILMTCoreVMMan::printStatistics::STATISTICS: 3 files from 1 VM Managers were processed. Processed clusters: 0, skipped clusters: 2, processed hosts: 0, skipped hosts: 0, processed guests: 0 (includes 0 guests without VM hierarchy changes and 0 without any changes), skipped guests: 0, duplicated guests: 0
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Brant Gurganus
Original Message:
Sent: Wed August 16, 2023 10:07 AM
From: Brant Gurganus
Subject: Incomplete virtualization hierarchy out the gate
This is an ILMT Lite installation.
The Local VM Manager connection is set up. Upon initial setup, it showed as pending. Without setting up a collector, we waited for the VM Manager to show as OK instead of Pending (waiting overnight for this to happen; there's no way we've found to force that transition in status).
I set up the collector on one VM, ran the collection jobs, and did an import.
ILMT shows this machine and detected software on it, but it indicates no VM Manager Data. If the VM Manager connection was good, why is it indicating no VM Manager Data? Even if it were to show right the next day, the fact is that it had a good VM Manager Data connection, so there's no reason it should be having the No VM Manager Data situation even on the first day. If the Local VM Manager data imports at 'Import' time, it should have all the data when the awareness of the newly set up machine was achieved.
Interestingly the import log shows:
2023-08-16 12:41:19 (+0:00:00.453) INFO: [ILMTCore] (ImportThread) com.ibm.ilmt.core.ILMTCoreVMMan::printStatistics::STATISTICS: 0 files from 0 VM Managers were processed. Processed clusters: 0, skipped clusters: 0, processed hosts: 0, skipped hosts: 0, processed guests: 0 (includes 0 guests without VM hierarchy changes and 0 without any changes), skipped guests: 0, duplicated guests: 0
which seems to imply the Local VM Manager isn't supplying data it should be supplying. My understanding is that data should be collected every 30 minutes (or as configured) and then imported on demand or as scheduled. So that in the import log indicates a problem somewhere.
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Brant Gurganus
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