New UI Impact Series - Topology Node Grouping
Next up in our series is Topology Node Grouping. This new feature allows users to dynamically group nodes in saved topology maps based on up to three levels of property metadata. By leveraging tags and labels stored as LogicMonitor properties, you can now organize your complex network maps into intuitive, property-based clusters.The groups are automatically color-coded according to alert status, providing an instant visual indicator of potential issues within specific node groups. So, how does this help you troubleshoot more efficiently? In complex network environments, identifying the severity level and location of issues can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Topology Node Grouping transforms this process, allowing you to quickly assess the 'blast radius' of any network problem. For instance, in a map of virtual machines, grouping by location could instantly reveal that all alerts originate from a specific data center. This level of clarity, which would have required extensive zooming and manual inspection in the past, is now available at a glance. By speeding up the identification of affected areas, Topology Node Grouping enables IT professionals to respond more swiftly and effectively to network issues, potentially reducing downtime and improving overall network performance. Want to know more about Topology Node Grouping? Check out these articles on Node Grouping and Searching for Nodes.
A DataSource to Troubleshoot ERI Merging
One of the most common behaviours noticed in topology maps is ERI Merging. This is caused when two or more devices share the same identifier (ERI). The example I always like to give when I’m teaching Topology Mapping is the word “football”. To a European like myselfthis is a game played with your feet, however in other parts of the worldthis is an altogether different game. Now let’s imagine we have a Topology Map connecting various sports together; what would show up if the map connects “football” to “basketball” - would it be the kicking game or the throwing game? Well, in LogicMonitor, it would be effectively indeterministic to tell. The two games would merge into a single object in the map (they merge into one of the resources at “random”). A key indicator of merging is one device showing as another device in the topology map. Luckily, there are a few out of the boxways to overcome this merging - the topo.blacklistand topo.namespace properties. If you’re interested in finding out more about merging how these are used, I have created a LearningByte which you can watch for free in LM Academy here - you will need a free Academy account created first. https://academy.logicmonitor.com/topology-mapping-toponamespace-topoblacklist/1329206 In order to use the blacklist property, you must know which ERIs are being merged. This can be discovered in the UI through a manual comparison of ERIs between resources (you can export to excel and process there if you’d like), however this can be a cumbersome process and doesn’t reveal how many resources are merged. That’s where my new ERIMergeTroubleshooter comes in. Using the LogicMonitor API to run the !erimergelist and !erimergedetail collector debug commands, it creates one instance for each merged ERI and a subsequent instance level property listing which other resources merge with that ERI. For example, we can see that this “Router” resource has merged with a “Server” resource. Applying the troubleshooter DataSource, it immediately reveals which particular ERI has merged, and which resource it has merged with (this is a trivial example, although most situations are often more complex). If you’d like to try out this custom Logicmodule, it can be imported now from the LMExchange (locator: F26PEJ); it will be great to hear some feedback from real world testing! Caveats: By default, this applies to all resources in the portal, so users should modify the appliesto if they require testing on specific devices only The module has not been tested against or developed for chained ERI merging API credentials are to be added as device properties based on the technical notes Thanks!
