HPE IMC Real-Time Location not working anymore

[SMAD]

Hello,

Since I have update to iMC PLAT 7.3 (E0703), the Real-time location return everytime "No match found" and "Failure time out"

Coulr you please help me ?

Thanks

[jguse]

Hello,

This will be fixed in the next release 7.3 E0705 in a month or so, but in the meantime here is a workaround to extend the timeout of RTLS. Steps below...

1. Please find $iMC/client/conf/msgcomm.properties file and open it in a text editor (enable the file extention to checkbox if you have trouble finding it)
2. Add the following two lines to the bottom:

#\u5B9E\u65F6\u5B9A\u4F4D\u7684\u8D85\u65F6\u65F6\u95F4

java.cpp.locate.time=600

3. Save and close it, then verify if the RTLS timeout issue is resolved. Note that scans may take long to complete - this sets the timeout to 600 seconds to allow enough time to complete. You may need to restart IMC.

Hope that helps.

[SMAD]

Thanks

I've made the modification and restart the IMC server.

I have no more timeout but after 160sec, I have "No match found".

[jguse]

Hello,

Can you please clarify:

* Are you searching for a MAC or IP address? Are both showing the same issue?

* What type of device are you searching for? Is it a wired endpoint (like a PC connected to one of your IMC-managed switches), or something else?

* Did you discover and manage all devices in the 'path' from IMC to the endpoint in IMC?

* Does the device where the IP/MAC is connected have the IP&MAC in the ARP table and MAC in the mac-addr-table?

* What vendor and model of switches and routers do you have on your network? This is important because RTLS uses various SNMP Queries to its managed devices to try locating the MAC address, and I've seen some device types that reject/do not support these queries (like BRIDGE-MIB's dot1dTpFdbAddress, dot1dTpFdbPort, and IP-MIB's ipNetToMediaPhysAddress)

Generally you can troubleshoot RTLS by:

* Enabling DEBUG on imcl2topodm and jserver processes (via System Configuration > Log Configuration) and check the log files you can download, after a scan... do make sure to set them back to INFO afterwards.

* Running a Wireshark packet capture during RTLS scan and filtering for snmp.

Note that if you get 'no match found' this generally means IMC scanned all devices that it knows, and none of them returned an interface index where the MAC is connected via SNMP.

If keeping the ARP/MAC tables on devices updated is an issue, IMC provides two features to help devices keep them updated, under System Configuration > System Settings > Layer 2 Topology Configuration:

1. Enable DismanPing: The DismanPing test enables devices to maintain the latest MAC address table entries of neighboring devices by periodically broadcasting DismanPing packets, and allows the system to precisely draw the Layer 2 topology.

2. Enable Forged Ping Packets: For a device where DismanPing is not enabled, this feature periodically sends forged ping packets to the device to trigger the device to send broadcast ARP messages. This feature solves the problem that some device links are lost within a period of time because MAC address entries age out. This feature improves the accuracy of the links drawn based on MAC address learning. By default, this feature is enabled.

If you are using Cisco devices, IMC does not use the community@vlan extension SNMP community string on Cisco devices by default. You can change this via the System Configuration > System Settings > Layer 2 Topology Configuration and setting the "Enable Realtime Location Extension" to Yes.

Hope that helps.

[SMAD]

* Are you searching for a MAC or IP address? Are both showing the same issue? It works only with MAC Adress, not with IP Adress

* What type of device are you searching for? Is it a wired endpoint (like a PC connected to one of your IMC-managed switches), or something else?  Yes

* Did you discover and manage all devices in the 'path' from IMC to the endpoint in IMC? Yes

* Does the device where the IP/MAC is connected have the IP&MAC in the ARP table and MAC in the mac-addr-table?  the  MAC exists in the show mac-address 22 of the switch

* What vendor and model of switches and routers do you have on your network? Only HPE

[jguse]

Hello,

It sounds like there is some issue with getting a result from the ipNetToMediaPhysAddress SNMP queries. When you scan for an IP address, IMC RTLS first uses this query to determine the MAC address associated with that IP address, and then does the same things as the MAC query to find out on which port this MAC address is known.

If you are unable to figure out why the query doesn't work, please open a Support Case so that we can investigate it properly. I would recommend gathering a Data Collection (System Configuration > Data Collection) or running deploy\logfiles.bat from CMD, after you've run a failed scan with "imcl2topodm" and "imcforeground" on DEBUG and run a packet capture at the same time. This is the data that we generally request for analysis in such cases.

Here are the steps:

1) System Configuration > Log Configuration and set "imcl2topodm" and "jserver" process to DEBUG.

2) Start a Wireshark packet capture on the IMC Server.

3) Run the failing scan for an IP address and make note of the IP you scanned for. Wait until the scan fails/times out.

4) Stop the capture and save the capture file for analysis.

5) Set the Log Configuration on the processes back to INFO.

6) Gather the IMC Logfiles with Data Collection or logfiles.bat for analysis.

Feel free to refer to this post as reference when you open the case, and provide us with the data above for analysis (we will provide you with a secure FTP once the case is opened).