New to this and uncertain if this is possible...

Question

I've searched for this and can't find anything and I'm about to start working with support but maybe the community at large has an answer already..

Our DHCP doesn't correlate to locations, they're pretty generic in terms of naming convention. So, we're trying to build out a list of every segment to physical location.

We're POC'ing the NAM product and with all this data it should be possible to say. I have all these VLAN's on these devices and these devices are located at location X, so VLAN's @ Location, right?

I can't figure out where to do this and support has suggested it's possible, but NOT out of the box, which honestly seems strange, but, ok, i'll code if I have to and I assume it's a report, not a dashboard, I don't care, i just need to the tool to do it well... ya know?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

jm_sysadmin · Answer

It works they way you want it to, I think, but may not lead to you being happy with it. Custom properties go at the group level or node, or interface, or in fact at most levels of object in Orion. But you do have to know how to get to them after you set them. When you write your alerts are you alerting on the group? If not, you might need to find a way to pull information from a group in, and groups holding that info can be hard to link because you can be a member of multiple groups. I found that having it on the node makes it easiest for me since most things have a direct relation to the node, and most of my reports, dashboards, and alert can be tied to the node as well. Your goals might be different.

I hear your concern about not wanting to have to set the same information a bunch of times. Its not the best, and if take a look at the feature requests for custom properties, other people agree with you and I would like improvements too. I don't let it drive me nuts. I started with the csv import/export I linked to before, got all my properties straight there ( thank you Excel auto populate). That got me started and wasn't too big a hurdle to get over.

But I have done more to help keep me sane, and I get its likely not what you want to hear. I have scripts that pull the list of nodes and some of the properties. Sometimes I take the IP and set values based on that. Sometimes I pull data from our CMDB and stamp custom property data from there to the right places based on name matches. Sometimes I use 1 custom property value set by hand populate more values I mapped in the script. Sometimes I pull data in for our servers patching and maintenance windows from SCCM and stamp that assignment and upcoming days that patching will occur. You could take a group, read its members, and stamp the specific values down to all the members of that group.

My scripts after their written run via service account and scheduled task and do most of the maintenance of custom properties for me. Personally I like PowerShell scripts.

I find (not just with Orion, but all the IT tools I use) once I want to get something done and can't the way I want it to, I need to step back. I think about what I need to get done, and try to think not about what I want to do, but about how to do it best (easy is very important for me) in the tool in front of me. Forcing a tool to work beyond how it was designed can lead to crazy things later and surprises at all the wrong times.

If you think you know your goals, people here have great examples to start from, and many can help you with the automation. Post away and you can always feel free to tag me and I will pull others in if I think they can help too.

gregthompson · Answer

So that's custom properties per node but I'm talking about custom properties on a group, and then correlate the nodes in the group, and the data associated with the node, specifically discovered vlans on the node.

Let's say you have a group called Main Street Hospital. Add an address to it, whether that's custom or not I don't know. Then add nodes to that group. Now Main Street Hospital has a property of 123 Main Street, Anytown USA, 11111.

Run a report, or build a SQL / SWQL statement, or a dashboard that says here are the VLANs found @ 123 Main Street.

jm_sysadmin · Answer

OK that helps. But If I am going in the wrong direction let me know.

A few things come to mind, one the world maps in NPM/Orion will populate via either the location field pulled from SNMP or custom properties.

See: Display the Worldwide Map of Orion nodes in the Orion Platform

Right now I actually have an issue using custom properties, but I think its an issue with my install not overall. 
But custom properties are likely the way to get the right information at the right time. You could just put it in the comments, but figuring out custom properties is worth every minute you spend on it. 
For networking stuff we fill out the properties below (when appropriate). This give us good reports, dashboards, and most importantly alerts. Mostly I do this via script and the API, but you can also just ue excel:

Success Center

We also auto discover relationships and fix the ones that don't discover perfectly. Take a look at:

Success Center

I just says success cneter but should bring you to a dependencies article. When set up right the Orion maps will be better and your alerts will be less noisy when a location is lost.