HP PCM+ "Device already exists" error when adding non-HP equipment

[Drew_38]

Dear all;

I've been running HP PCM+ for a few years now with little problems. 470+ HP devices are in there plus about 100 or so non-HP which PCM used to happily report the status of. When I was running version 2.2 an automatically downloaded patch, the number of which can't quite recall which, seemed to delete a lot of the non-HP devices from PCM. I was waiting for a new patch before I posted on here in case the problem was fixed. Just updated to version 2.3 and the problem still persists. I'll explain below.

Once I'd noticed a device (Cisco wireless AP) had vanished I tried to manually add using the manual discovery wizard. Some came back ok but with others PCM reported that "Device already exists. Do you want to delete and rediscover?". I noticed that, going back into the manual discovery wizard, the IP number of the device I was adding had changed. For instance I might try and add device 192.168.1.20, but when that failed I could go back into the wizard and the IP number would be 192.168.1.33, another device which was already added. Except of course I was adding a different device.

Now I may just take this moment to remind you all everything was working fine until PCM patched itself; I've not changed any SNMP configurations or anything. So it's nothing to do with the configuration of the network equipment in my opinion.

This situation has had me stumped, but I think I've found out what is happening. This problem only occurs when the first 10 digits of the ethernet address of the item to be added is the same. What is happening is when I add a device with an ethernet address of 000f346b9d68, it says it is already added, when the device already added has address 000f346b9db8. Similarly when adding 000d653d9976 is says it's already added, when really the existing device is 000d653d9950. I've about 10 pairs of devices, all Cisco APs, which PCM is getting confused about.

So all I can conclude is that PCM+ is ignoring the last two digits of, in this case, the ethernet address my Cisco APs, and won't add them, as it thinks they are already there.

I realise PCM+ is meant for managing HP devices, but I have found it useful being able to add non-HP kit and check the status of it. I'm cross HP appear to have broken this.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Anyone know a fix? Or do I need to bug it with HP (an experience which I have found to be tortuously annoying in the past).

Thanks all for reading,

Drew

[Ralph Bean_2]

Drew -

I recommend you open a trouble call with ProCurve Support. This is not something that can be resolve through the Forum.

Ralph

[Drew_38]

I think you are probably right Ralph; however other people may have logged it with HP and they might mention it here if they have. So I often find it good to check with the experts here first.