Auto-unmanaging or Deleting Components

Once components are managed, eG Enterprise employs agent-based/agentless techniques to monitor each managed target, and periodically pulls performance metrics from them. Sometimes, eG agents may stop pulling metrics from a component. The failure may persist if the target is no longer part of the monitored infrastructure or has been shut down for regular maintenance or upgrades. Administrators would be right to delete or at least temporarily unmanage such components to save monitoring resources. This can however prove to be a challenge in large dynamic infrastructures, where components are added/removed frequently. In such environments, administrators can find it cumbersome to identify components that are no longer reporting metrics and to manually delete/unmanage them from the eG Enterprise system. To minimize the administrative effort involved in this exercise, you can now configure the eG manager to automatically unmanage/delete components that are not reporting metrics beyond a configured duration. Additionally, if components auto-discovered using application/infrastructure APIs - eg., Citrix XenApp servers, VMware vSphere servers etc. - are removed from the infrastructure, you can configure the eG manager to instantly delete/unmanage the corresponding components from the eG Enterprise system. This setting is useful for environments that are dynamically provisioned or deprovisioned.

To achieve the above, do the following:

1. Login to the eG admin interface.

2. Follow the Infrastructure -> Discovery menu sequence.

3. Click the Auto unmanage/delete option under the Settings sub-node of the Discovery node in the DISCOVERY tree in the left panel.

4. The COMMON SETTINGS - AUTO UNMANAGE/DELETE page will then appear in the right panel.

5. To enable the eG manager to automatically unmanage/delete components that are not rediscovered and not reporting, turn on the Enable automatic actions on components that are not re-discovered and not reporting flag in the General Settings section to Yes. Enabling this flag will not only display the additional settings in the General Settings section but also invoke the Manager Settings and Agent Settings sections.

6. Next, indicate what action you want to automate on components that are not re-discovered and not reporting. If you want to delete such components automatically, then select the Delete option from the What action you would like to take? list. If you want to unmanage the components, select the Unmanage option from the What action you would like to take? list.

7. If the Delete option is chosen from the What action you would like to take? list, then by default, eG Enterprise will automatically delete a component only if that component of a type has been explicitly configured to be auto-managed upon discovery. To instruct the eG manager to do so, choose the Auto-manage List option from the Take action for component types in list. On the other hand, if you want to initiate the chosen action on a component whether/not it belongs to the ‘auto-manage’ list, then select the Discovery List option from the Take action for component types in list.

8. By default, the Unmanaged state option is set against the Take action for components in list box indicating that the eG manager will delete only those components that are unmanaged and have not been reporting metrics for the configured duration. However, if you want to delete even the managed components, then select the Managed and Unmanaged state option from this list.

9. If the Unmanage option is chosen from the What action you would like to take? list, then by default, eG Enterprise will automatically unmanage only those components that have not been reporting metrics for the configured duration. If you want the eG manager to unmanage only those components that are configured to be auto-managed upon discovery, then choose the Auto-manage List option from the Take action for component types in list. In contrast, if you wish to unmanage the component types that are explicitly configured to be auto-discovered, then by select the Discovery List option from the Take action for component types in list.

10. In the Manager Settings section, specify when the chosen action should be triggered. In other words, in the Take this action when components have not been re-discovered and not reporting for text box, mention how long a component should not be reporting metrics for it to be auto-deleted/unmanaged by the eG manager. By default, it is set to 8 days. Remember that the minimum number of days should not be lesser than 3 days.

11. If components have been auto-discovered using application/infrastructure APIs - eg., VMware vSphere servers discovered using vCenter, Citrix XenApp servers discovered from delivery groups etc. - and managed using the eG Enterprise system, then every time these components are physically removed from the target infrastructure, you can have them instantly unmanaged/deleted (as the case may be) from eG Enterprise as well. To achieve this, set the Take action immediately if the components have been removed from the IT infrastructure flag in the Agent Settings section to Yes.

12. Finally, click the Update button.