Discovery process overview

During the discovery process, the
MPLS Topology Server
component of
uses instances of certain
VMware Smart Assurance
object classes to create within its repository a data model representation of the discovered MPLS, VPN, and (optional) BGP topology. The various data models that are supported by the
MPLS Topology Server
are shown in:
  • The
    MPLS Topology Server
    discovers MPLS-, VPN-, and BGP-specific objects in accordance to the topology that is initially imported from the
    IP Availability Manager
    source. The imported topology consists of router and switch objects, router and switch containment objects, and router and switch connectivity objects.
    CLI device-access objects are also imported from
    IP Availability Manager
    .
    Upon sending SNMP polls/and or CLI commands to the imported devices to discover the MPLS, VPN, and BGP topology, the
    MPLS Topology Server
    models (represents) the discovered topology in its repository, and maps the discovered topology to the router and switch topology that is discovered by
    IP Availability Manager
    .
    Topology information that is needed for monitoring and analysis is then imported from the
    MPLS Topology Server
    by the
    MPLS Monitoring Server
    and the
    MPLS Analysis Server
    . The subset of topology that is imported by the
    MPLS Monitoring Server
    consists of just those classes and class attributes that are related to monitoring. The subset of topology that is imported by the
    MPLS Analysis Server
    consists of just those classes and class attributes that are related to causality.