Scheduled discoveries of Cisco ACI infrastructure - Adaptive Applications - BlueCat Gateway - 24.1

Discovery jobs let you import Cisco ACI infrastructure details into a configuration within BlueCat Address Manager (BAM). You can configure BlueCat Cisco ACI discoveries to automatically repeat at a defined interval. This helps make sure the set of imported resources in BAM are kept up to date with changes in the Cisco ACI infrastructure.

Much of the configuration of a scheduled BlueCat Cisco ACI discovery job is identical to a one-time discovery. Before setting up a Discovery job for a Cisco ACI infrastructure, you must scan the Cisco ACI network for possible tenants to discover.

After you've updated the Discovered tenant list, you can configure or update your scheduled discovery job.

To import Cisco ACI tenant infrastructures into the Address Manager configuration:

1. If you haven't already done so, use the BlueCat Cisco ACI workflow to discover the available tenants on your Cisco ACI infrastructure.

2. Specify how you want tenant information to be added to BAM Configurations:

   1. To import each tenant into its own BAM Configuration, click Default (above the table of tenants). Cisco ACI will create new configurations in Address Manager as needed.

   2. To import information from all tenants into a single BAM configuration, click Custom and enter the name of the BAM Configuration that you want to use. If that Configuration does not exist, BlueCat Cisco ACI will create it.

   For more details on how the BlueCat Cisco ACI plugin works with BAM Configurations, see Imported ACI Tenant data and Address Manager Configurations.

3. In the Discovered tenants table, choose the tenants whose information you want to import .

   Tip: To filter the tenant list, enter a search term in the Search box. To adjust the number of tenants displayed at a time in the list, select the desired count in the Show box.

   To do so, for each discovered tenant:

   • To import that tenant, select its Import Tenant checkbox.

   • To import that tenant's devices, also select its Import end point Devices checkbox.

   • (Optional) Also select or clear the Overwrite Existing checkbox depending on whether you want ACI Tenant components that already exist as objects in BAM to overwrite the existing BAM objects.

     The conflict resolution behavior is complex. For a detailed description of what the BlueCat Cisco ACI workflow considers a "conflict" and how those conflicts are resolved, see Reference: Conflicts with existing data in BAM.

     Note: These tenant import settings (Import Tenant, Import end point devices, Overwrite Existing, and Schedule) have no effect on the import of ACI Fabric devices.

   • To include the tenant in the list of scheduled discoveries, select its Schedule checkbox.

     This checkbox has no effect if you are not using scheduled discoveries (that is, if the Enable discovery schedule checkbox is cleared).

4. After selecting the Import Tenant and Schedule checkboxes for the tenants that you want to add to the Scheduled Discovery job, do the following:

   1. In the table of tenants, tick the Schedule checkbox for each tenant that you want to include in scheduled discoveries.

   2. In the Scheduled discoveries section, tick the Enable discovery schedule checkbox.

   3. In Interval, enter the number of seconds to wait between discoveries.

      BlueCat Cisco ACI will wait the indicated number of seconds after each discovery before running the discovery again.

      The interval can be from 0 to 2,592,000 (about a month). If the interval is 0, discovery will run continuously.

      Note: Only tenants whose Schedule checkbox is ticked will be included in subsequent discovery jobs.

5. When you've selected all the tenants and items that you want to use in the scheduled discovery job, click Run discovery.

   The BlueCat Cisco ACI workflow imports details about the selected tenants into a configuration into Address Manager.

   If you're using scheduled discovery, after the discovery finishes, it will then wait the specified interval and re-run discovery again. While the job is running, BlueCat Cisco ACI displays the status of the scheduled discovery job as Running.

   Tip: If any new tenants are found during a scheduled discovery job, they are automatically added to the Discovered tenants list.