World Map Group Automatic Placement

Question

Hi Everybody,

It was my understanding that the world map would be able to place groups automatically based off group custom fields (Latitude/Longtitude). I have created these custom fields based off the Latitude/Longitude templates (floating point) and populated this field for every group. When I edit the world map resource on my dashboard, I have selected only groups, not nodes, to appear on the map.

I was expecting Solarwinds to take some time to re-discover the locations of my groups based on these custom fields and then populate the world map but currently there are no items on the map at all (I added Latitude/Longitude custom fields 2 days ago). So there is clearly a problem.

Am I missing something? Please don't tell me I need to create a Latitude/Longitude custom field for EVERY NODE for it to work?

Thanks in advance.

baz00r · Answer

You're solution in the second link is exactly how I would have expected Solarwinds to operate out of the box. Having a separate table for "Sites", "Locations", "POPs" whatever you want to call it seems to dam logical to me, you could then have a drop down field when adding a node to select the site and have the node inherit the location details (even contact details for example). If this is what groups were meant for, or if you are supposed to do it using groups it's clunky at best. Once again something in Solarwinds that you would expect to be straight forward and obvious is quite the opposite.

I'm going to go with the manual placement for now as we only have 30 or so groups, plus I am but a temporary/contractor and don't want to put in place any custom solutions which will get lost in the aether if/when I leave. Thanks.

mesverrum · Answer

In that second link i posted above there is a technique for placing groups automatically, assuming the groups reflect a site location.   It works very nicely and automates the whole task once you feed it a table full of site names and coordinates.

baz00r · Answer

Thanks to both for your response.

I assumed it worked with groups because when I "manage map" it gives me the option to uncheck nodes and check groups. I had read a previous how-to on how to copy Latitude and Longtitude values into the Latitude(worldmap) and Longitude(world map) but this appears to only be a field related to nodes, not groups.

SNMP is not an option unfortunately. Having to populate the Latitude(worldmap) and Longitude(worldmap) fields manually just seems to tedious and I am surprised that you can't make nodes inherit their location based off a group custom property.

Seems more logical to have a latitude/longitude field for say, 30 groups, then it does for 2000+ individual nodes. I guess I will just place the groups manually on the map instead.