Q? - How do I get Orion to autoupdate the int descriptions

If I change the description on a cisco switch interface Orion continues to show the old names. How do I either manually (but not by typing in the new description) or by creating a schedule get Orion to update its description for the interface?

Thanks

Batch

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Batch

Any ideas?

tdanner

Interface naming gets a little complicated. When you refer to Orion's description, you probably mean our Name property for the interface (stored in the Caption field of the Interfaces table in the database). This is the one you can edit in the Interface Details screen and its the one Orion uses to display the interface in most contexts. It's constructed out of a few other parts like the ifName, ifDesc and ifAlias at the time the interface is added to Orion. The construction rules are a little bit involved to account for how all the different devices out there populate these fields. This constructed name doesn't get updated when the underlying fields change.

How to approach this depends on whether Orion is picking up your the changes to the interface descriptions or not. It should be, but you should verify that before going further. Open the Interface Details screen for one of these interfaces and see if the new description shows up in one of those fields.

Let me know what you find and I can help you build a SQL query to update Interfaces.Caption.

Batch

Thankyou for taking the time to reply to my post.

I have looked at the interface in NPM and it is set as follows

The Name at the top (that you can edit) shows the 'Interface Name - <old interface description>'
The Interface Alias shows the correct name as set in description on the interface
The first Name in list (5 lines down) shows the same as the Name at the top (that you can edit)
The second Name in the list (10 lines down) shows the '<switch name> - <Interface Name> - <Old Interface Name>'

So the interface Alias is correct but how do I get Orion to update the other fields?

One other problem we notice is that if you add a switch to Orion with nothing connected all the interfaces are detected as 10Mb but if you then connect a device so the interface is then 100Mb or 1000Mb Orion still reports it as 10Mb.

Thanks

tdanner

Ok, that makes this easier. If you clear out the Caption and FullName fields in the database for those interfaces, Orion will regenerate them a few seconds later using the current interface alias value.

What you need to do is build a SQL SELECT query that grabs the interfaces whose names you want to reset. It's ok if it grabs too many interfaces as long as you understand that we're going to be clearing any names that you have editing in Orion.

For example, if it's just VLAN interfaces whose names you want to reset, you could find them like this:

SELECT * FROM Interfaces WHERE InterfaceTypeName='propVirtual'

Look over that list and make sure you are ok with reseting the names on those interfaces. If so, run this query:

UPDATE Interfaces SET Caption='', FullName='' WHERE InterfaceTypeName='propVirtual'

Whatever WHERE clause you settle on in the SELECT query, just use that in the UPDATE query as well. Give Orion a minute or two to notice the database update and repopulate the names.

It would be a good idea to back up the database before doing this in case something goes wrong. When doing a sweeping UPDATE like that, it's too easy for a typo to really mess something up.

From what I've seen, switches with ports set to autonegotiate (which is common) tend to report their speeds as 10 MB when nothing is connected. Orion is just reporting what it sees here.

tbaggins

Batch,

I have always just gone into Orion after making the changes on the interface and clicked the "rediscover" button under node details. This usually does it. if not, select the interface itself and click rediscover. That for sure will update the database. There has to be a way to do this with a SQL script but I'm not very saavy unfortunatly.

Batch

Tim > Thanks for the SQL code I will give it a try later and let you know how I get on

tbaggins > Clicking the rediscover button doesn't seem to make any difference whether we do it on the node or the interface....very odd

JasonKV

It seems this problem has surfaced again in 10.1.2.

Not sure if it is just on my machines or if anyone else has experienced this. Is the SQL described above still valid? Are there other work arounds that will fix this.

The rediscover button did not work for me either.

Thanks,

Nandish

Can you open a support ticket to investigate further and reference the ticket# back with the solution.