Overview

The
VMware Smart Assurance Server Manager
is a specially configured instance of an
IP Manager
that is started as a “DISCOVERY_MANAGER.” As such, the
discovers availability-type (but not performance-type) topology objects and does no monitoring or analysis of the discovered topology.
The
provides scalable topology management for IP network domains that contain a large number of devices. When run in normal mode with all operating features enabled, the
performs the following tasks:
  • Performs an initial discovery of the devices
  • Splits the discovered devices across multiple domains that are managed by individual
    IP Availability Manager
    s
  • Creates a seed file of devices for each domain
  • Places the devices that are listed in a domain’s seed file onto the Pending Devices list of the domain’s
    IP Availability Manager
  • Adds proxy devices to the domains so that events from the
    IP Availability Manager
    s can be stitched together correctly by the
    (
    Global Manager
    ) to point to the common root cause
    Given a large topology, like the one in Large IP network, the goal of the
    is to split the devices in the topology into a user-specified number of domains such that the domains are fairly equal in size and the number of proxy devices is kept to a minimum.
    Large IP network
    Splitting a large IP network into four domains—Example is an example of a large topology that has been split by the
    into four domains, each of which is managed by an
    IP Availability Manager
    .
    Splitting a large IP network into four domains—Example
    An “
    IP Availability Manager
    ” may be either an
    IP Availability Manager
    (AM) or an
    IP Availability Manager
    and an
    IP Performance Manager
    running as a single process (AM-PM).