Clarification Required on NCM Compliance Report Status "Not Cached"

Question

Hello Folks,

I am currently reviewing and learning the NCM Compliance Job feature in SolarWinds and would appreciate some clarification regarding the report generation process. Based on the documentation, my understanding is that the workflow is as follows:

* Create Compliance Rules.
* Assign the Rules to a Policy.
* Add the Policy to a Compliance Report.
* Run the Compliance Job to generate compliance results.

While reviewing the compliance reports, I noticed that the Report Status is displayed as "Not Cached" for some reports.Could you please help me understand:

* What exactly does the "Not Cached" status indicate in the context of NCM Compliance Reports?
* How is a Not Cached report different from a Cached report?
* Does the status impact the compliance evaluation process or only the report display/generation?
* When generating a policy compliance report, are there any prerequisites or best practices related to report caching that we should be aware of?
* Can a report showing Not Cached still be considered the latest and valid compliance result?

@cnorborg @KMSigma.SWI @jeremymayfield

Regards,

Akash

KOHLIfied · Answer

Thanks @planglois and @cnorborg  for your inputs. That really helps.

cnorborg · Answer

Most often when its not cached, you forgot to select the nodes in the Policy.   The report is a collection of Policy's and has a couple options.  The Policy is a collection of rules, plus it defines what nodes the rules should be run against.   The rules are the actual workhorse that does everything.

After selecting how nodes will be selected, be sure to have it show you the list of what was actually selected.  Easy to make typos.

Once there are active nodes in the policy, try running the report again.

planglois · Answer

This should help :)

* What exactly does the "Not Cached" status indicate in the context of NCM Compliance Reports?* Not cached means the compliance report has not yet run and there are no valid results.

* How is a Not Cached report different from a Cached report?* A cached report has valid compliance results available. To change from not cached to cached, simply check a report then click update. Compliance rules associated to this report will be checked against the network configurations, and once completed, the report will be available to be consulted.

* Does the status impact the compliance evaluation process or only the report display/generation?* You won't be able to visualize a non-cached report.

* When generating a policy compliance report, are there any prerequisites or best practices related to report caching that we should be aware of?* You can either have the report updated manually or on schedule. See

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/ncm/content/ncm-update_view_policy_reports.htm

for more information.

* Can a report showing Not Cached still be considered the latest and valid compliance result?* A report showing Not Cached is blank and has no valid information to display.