Unable to delete deactivated polling engines and web servers

marcrobinson

I am replacing polling engines and trying to deactivate the old ones. This should be easy. I have multiple modules and multiple polling engines and web servers. I am currently on Orion Core 2017.3, and replacing all servers with shiny Windows 2016 servers to prep for the next round of upgrades. I know that you can perform a migration, but that is not the only scenario that I have.

Currently the deactivated unused polling engine option in the web console does not work if you own VNQM, and potentially other modules due to constraints.  I have seen this twice now. Once with a temp polling engine that I wanted to remove and now with others that I am replacing. This needs to be fixed and automated as hunting through the database and hoping that you delete all entries in the correct order is not efficient.

I have seen the KB that describes how to reuse the ip/hostname etc. I am able to use this KB as a guide to replace my polling engines and web servers. Its quick and easy until you delete the unused server… <https://support.solarwinds.com/Success_Center/Orion_Platform/Knowledgebase_Articles/Move_an_Additional_Polling_Engine_to_another_server>

The following document does not cover all the tables: Removing old polling engines and websites from previous migrations

Below are the other tech docs that I don’t plan to use right now. I have other NPM instances, and plan to move engines between them– hence my desire to get the cleanup correct. Yes these are valid instructions, but I simply need to remove and add engines.

Migrate SolarWinds Orion products to a new server using the same IP and hostname.

Migrate SolarWinds Orion products to a new server with a new IP and hostname

Migration Guide – this document has most of the information I needed (links). I would recommend adding the link about moving the additional polling engine to another server.

Here is the link to the article about VNQM not playing nice. This is the issue that I have run into twice now. I expect it will occur every time I try to delete a polling engine via web console.

https://support.solarwinds.com/Success_Center/Network_Performance_Monitor_(NPM)/Unable_to_delete_additional_polling_engine_The_DELETE_statement_conflicted_with_the_REFERENCE_constraint_FK_VoipEngines_EngineID

I have the following modules: ORION CORE 2017.3; NPM, NTA, NCM,SAM, IPAM, WPM, VNQM. I am prepping for the NPM 12.3 upgrade and later by getting the windows servers to Microsoft Windows 2016, and deploying a SQL Server 2016 sp1 for NTA, etc.

I don’t think that NCM uses its own engine tables anymore, but that is why I am reaching out. I don’t believe that the web servers are in any other tables except OrionServers and websites.

Temp Tables :A temp poller that I used to for monitoring while I worked on other polling engines stayed in this table, despite deactivation and cleanup. I need to reuse that name for a new webserver, and give the IP to another server.  I believe I need to clean these tables up too.

tempVoipEngines

tempFlowEngines

tempEngines

tempEngineProperties

Website Tables

Websites : Orion

OrionServers : Orion

Polling Engine Tables and relevant module

VoipEngines : VNQM

NetFlowEnginesStatistics : NTA

FlowEngines : NTA

IPAM_Engine : IPAM

EngineProperties : Orion (I heard this was deprecated, but it shows the new engines that I deployed two weeks ago.)

Engines : Orion

Deprecated tables (that I know about and have seen remnants)

AllEngines

This is what I believe to be the cleanup process. I am looking for confirmation.

Clean up process: Polling Engine cleanup starting with #1 and proceeding in order:

1. Shutdown all services
2. Log into database
3. All non orion tables first, see below for suggested order.

a. NTA Netflowenginestatistics table first, then flowengines table

b. Voipengines

c. IPAM_engine

4.  OrionServers Table

5. EngineProperties table

6. Engines table

Order of Web Server Cleanup - I do not know if there is an link between them, or if they are independent tables.

1. Websites
2. OrionServer

UPDATE 9/18/2018

I went through the tables deleting APE's and AWS's with no issues. But wait! There's MORE! I hadn't realized that that HA tables maintain their own list - which are independent of the Engines table as this never came up in conversation. I will repost after I clean those up. (I don't have HA licensed.) I will also update if I see anything else. I will be tackling those temp tables later.

Here are my related tickets.

Solarwinds Tickets

Feature Requests

Case # 00167367 - Feature Request - Removing Specific Module Engine automatically when deleting engines on the engines table

Case # - 00167289 UI Support For The Removal Of Additional Web Servers

Link to Feature Request:

Plain old tickets

Case # - 00168416 How to cleanly delete deactivated polling engines from database (IPAM)

Case # - 00167367 Removal Of Polling Engine under NTA

Case # - 00167365 Polling Engine Removal Under VNQM

Case # - 00167276 Additional Web Server Removal

Case # - 00164570 Old polling engine still shows up in web con

Case # - 00172322 What tables does WPM use for engine ids?

Case # - 00173395 and 00172310  for NCM

xtraspecialj

Jesus man, I'm going through this right now and I can't tell you how much I appreciate this article. 

It used to be so simple to delete polling engines, but you are right.  Now it is a nightmare.  We own every Orion module, so  unfortunately just clicking Delete Unused Polling Engine under the Polling Engines section just doesn't work now.  I don't understand why they can't script the deletion of all of these lines from the tables for us.  It makes no sense.  When we click Delete Unused Polling Engine, it should just go through and delete the engine from all relevant tables.  Making the customer have to dig through all these tables and make all these SQL deletions just seems beyond silly and dangerous to me.