Update but not erase manually entered data

Deltona, 

I had similar issues where comments on IPs were disappearing and opened a case with IPAM technical support. We resolved my questions. I asked that the documentation on this topic get updated to help clarify the situation. This is not currently well-documented. These notes may be helpful to the community.

1. IP address with status of "Used" must be reachable by PING or SNMP query to remain status Used.

2. IP that is not reachable during a subnet scan will be set to status "Transient".

3. IP that is status "Transient" will eventually be set to status "Available" (default after 7 days, this is configurable) if it is unreachable by PING or SNMP query.

4. IP with status "Reserved" is not changed by subnet scan to any other status and will remain "Reserved".

IP with status changed to "Available" has all attribute fields cleared, including comment and SNMP value fields. Therefore all IPs with a status other than Reserved are AT RISK OF ATTRIBUTE VALUES BEING CLEARED.

So consider all IP addresses with status of either Used or Transient to be automatically managed. Comments will not be preserved and the attributes will be dynamically determined from DNS, DHCP, or the device (via SNMP).

There is an subnet property "Update but not erase manually entered data" which only applies to SNMP attributes. It is there to prevent an IP's SNMP attributes from automatically being replaced by the device's values. This allows the administrator to have multiple device non-unique default attributes, yet have unique attributes set in IPAM that are not replaced during a subnet scan.

The SNMP values that are affected by the checkbox are below:
ResponseTime
Description
VendorIcon
Vendor
SysObjectId
sysName
Location
MachineType
Contact
LastCredential
LastBoot

There is a subnet property "Disable Automatic Scanning" which would prevent a scan from automatically updating the status from Transient to Available and therefore prevent the attributes from being cleared. Might be useful for subnets not accessible to SolarWinds polling servers - such as subnets on the far side of a firewall.

Bottom line:  To use the Comments or other manually edited attributes on an IP, set the IP Status to Reserved and maintain all IP attributes manually. 

Deltona, 

I had similar issues where comments on IPs were disappearing and opened a case with IPAM technical support. We resolved my questions. I asked that the documentation on this topic get updated to help clarify the situation. This is not currently well-documented. These notes may be helpful to the community.

1. IP address with status of "Used" must be reachable by PING or SNMP query to remain status Used.

2. IP that is not reachable during a subnet scan will be set to status "Transient".

3. IP that is status "Transient" will eventually be set to status "Available" (default after 7 days, this is configurable) if it is unreachable by PING or SNMP query.

4. IP with status "Reserved" is not changed by subnet scan to any other status and will remain "Reserved".

IP with status changed to "Available" has all attribute fields cleared, including comment and SNMP value fields. Therefore all IPs with a status other than Reserved are AT RISK OF ATTRIBUTE VALUES BEING CLEARED.

So consider all IP addresses with status of either Used or Transient to be automatically managed. Comments will not be preserved and the attributes will be dynamically determined from DNS, DHCP, or the device (via SNMP).

There is an subnet property "Update but not erase manually entered data" which only applies to SNMP attributes. It is there to prevent an IP's SNMP attributes from automatically being replaced by the device's values. This allows the administrator to have multiple device non-unique default attributes, yet have unique attributes set in IPAM that are not replaced during a subnet scan.

The SNMP values that are affected by the checkbox are below:
ResponseTime
Description
VendorIcon
Vendor
SysObjectId
sysName
Location
MachineType
Contact
LastCredential
LastBoot

There is a subnet property "Disable Automatic Scanning" which would prevent a scan from automatically updating the status from Transient to Available and therefore prevent the attributes from being cleared. Might be useful for subnets not accessible to SolarWinds polling servers - such as subnets on the far side of a firewall.

Bottom line:  To use the Comments or other manually edited attributes on an IP, set the IP Status to Reserved and maintain all IP attributes manually.