Initiating discovery

After preparing your
deployment for discovery, you initiate an
IP Availability Manager
discovery for each
IP Availability Manager
in the deployment. Then, you initiate an
discovery by starting the
component servers.
During startup, the
MPLS Topology Server
:
  • Registers with the
    VMware Smart Assurance
    Broker.
  • Loads its .import (probe) and configuration files, including mpls.conf and mpls-tma.conf.
  • Adds as a topology source each
    IP Availability Manager
    that is listed in the mpls.conf file.
  • Creates in its repository an InChargeDomain object (INCHARGE-AM, for example) for each
    IP Availability Manager
    instance that is added as a topology source.
  • Establishes a connection to each
    IP Availability Manager
    source and probes each source for router and switch topology and CLI device-access objects.
  • Imports and stores in its repository the router and switch topology that is discovered by each
    IP Availability Manager
    source.
  • Imports and stores in its repository the CLI device-access objects from the
    IP Availability Manager
    source that is exporting CLI device-access objects for
    operation.
  • Initiates its own discovery by sending SNMP polls and/or CLI commands to the router and switch devices to discover the MPLS, VPN, and (optional) BGP information that is needed to build the MPLS, VPN, and BGP topology.
    Chapter 9, “Understanding Discovery Results,” provides information about discovery errors and their solutions.
    After initial discovery, and assuming that the StopAutoAMSync parameter in the mpls.conf file is FALSE (default), the
    MPLS Topology Server
    imports topology from
    IP Availability Manager
    whenever
    IP Availability Manager
    completes a discovery cycle. “Synchronizing with IP Availability Manager” on page 126 describes how the
    MPLS Topology Server
    synchronizes its discovery with the discovery of
    IP Availability Manager
    .
    “Synchronizing with the MPLS Topology Server” on page 127 describes how the
    MPLS Monitoring Server
    and the
    MPLS Analysis Server
    components of
    synchronize their topology import with the discovery of the
    MPLS Topology Server
    .