Important information for users of BMC Atrium CMDB

If you plan to use the integration between BMC Atrium Discovery 8.1.1 and BMC Atrium CMDB, there are some pre-requisites and known issues and limitations that you need to be aware of.

Interaction of BMC Atrium Discovery 8.1.1 with other BMC data providers
BMC Atrium Discovery 8.1.1 can co-exist with other BMC data providers. In order to prevent duplicated Configuration items (CIs) in the BMC Atrium CMDB Asset dataset BMC recommends that the following minimum product versions when using other data providers in addition to BMC Atrium Discovery & Dependency Mapping.

BMC Atrium CMDB 7.5 – recommended Patch 004 and Hot Fix for defect SW00355736.
BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6 – recommended Patch 001 and Hot Fix for defect SW00355736.
BladeLogic – recommended BladeLogic Server Automation 8.0 SP2 and Hot fixes for SW00355142 and QM001646701. See below for details.
BPM/BPA – recommended BMC Performance Manager Portal 2.7.00.040. See below for details.
BBCA – recommended BMC BladeLogic Client Automation 8.1.01.
If you are using BBCA please be aware that there are two known issues that are fixed in BMC BladeLogic Client Automation 8.1.01. Please see the table below for exact details.

Supported Versions of BMC Atrium CMDB

Integrations with the following versions of BMC Atrium CMDB are supported:

BMC Atrium CMDB 7.5 – recommended Patch 004 and Hot Fix for defect SW00355736. (Available now)
BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6 – recommended Patch 001 and Hot Fix for defect SW00355736. (Available Now)

BMC Atrium CMDB

Issue	Description	Fix
SW00355736	The standard BMC Atrium CMDB reconciliation rules for BMC_ComputerSystem do not cope with the situation when one tool gets the serial number and another does not, but where Hostname, Domain, isVirtual, Primary Capability match. In this situation duplicate BMC_ComputerSystem CIs will be created.	Contact BMC Customer Support requesting Hot Fix for defect SW00355736 (7.5 P4 Hotfix - available, 7.6 P1 Hotfix - available now)
SW00348852 SW00352573	The standard BMC Atrium CMDB reconciliation rules for BMC_Application, BMC_SoftwareServer and BMC_ConnectivitySegment have fallback rule based only on the Type attribute. These rules should be based on Name. The impact of this is that duplicate BMC_Application, BMC_SoftwareServer and BMC_ConnectivitySegment CIs will be created during reconciliation with ADDM.	Atrium 7.5 Patch 004 Atrium 7.6 Patch 001

Pre-Requisites for CMDB Synchronization

Before a synchronization is attempted using BMC Atrium Discovery the following tasks must have been completed:

Extend the CMDB - In order to tightly integrate the two models it is necessary to store a BMC Atrium Discovery specific identifier on the corresponding BMC Classes in the CMDB. This attribute is not currently present in the default Atrium CDM, so it must be extended.
Create the BMC.ADDM dataset - It is required that the BMC.ADDM dataset is manually created in the CMDB before a synchronization is attempted.
Create the Job to merge the BMC.ADDM dataset with the BMC.ASSET dataset - Once the BMC.ADDM dataset has been created the job to reconcile it with the BMC.ASSET dataset needs to be created.

These are all documented here.

Co-existence with other Providers

The following issues exist in other BMC Products that can lead to duplicated Configuration items (CIs) in the BMC Atrium CMDB Asset dataset when reconciling with ADDM.

All dates mentioned regarding future releases are subject to change. Fixes which are available as hot fixes will be rolled into future patches, so check the latest patch release notes for the defect number to see if the hot fix is already included.

BladeLogic – recommended BladeLogic Server Automation 8.0 SP2 and Hot fixes for SW00355142 and QM001646701. See below for details.
BPM/BPA – recommended BMC Performance Manager Portal 2.7.00.040. See below for details.
BBCA – recommended BMC BladeLogic Client Automation 8.1.01 - Scheduled for Q2 CY2010. See below for details.

BladeLogic

Issue	Description	Fix
SW00355356	Serial number is a strong indicator of identity for the BMC_ComputerSystem and is therefore used in reconciliation. On older Solaris Sparc platforms serial number is not available. BL would set the serial number to a value derived from hostid of the BMC_ComputerSystem class. In this situation duplicate BMC_ComputerSystem CIs would be created.	Contact BMC Customer Support requesting BladeLogic Server Automation 8.0 SP2
SW00355142	For Windows Hosts BladeLogic sets the Domain attribute for BMC_ComputerSystem to be the Windows Domain and not its DNS Domain. The Domain attribute forms a part of the TokenID for a BMC_ComputerSystem CI. In this situation duplicate BMC_ComputerSystem CIs will be created.	Contact BMC Customer Support requesting Hot Fix for defect SW00355142
SW00355359	isVirtual attribute incorrectly set to `No` for Physical system. In this situation duplicate BMC_ComputerSystem CIs will be created.	Contact BMC Customer Support requesting BladeLogic Server Automation 8.0 SP2
QM001646701	When executing the BL reconciliation job after the ADDM reconciliation job the CIs associated with a merged BMC_ComputerSystem class ( e.g.: BMC_Processor and BMC_IPEndpoint) are not merged and result in duplicate CIs.	Contact BMC Customer Support requesting Hot Fix for defect QM001646701
QM001642175	Server name should be picked up from FQ_HOST instead of Host property on it's product. When a ComputerSystem is discovered by both BL and ADDM this issue can result in the ComputerSystem not being reconciled when the case of the Hostname is not the same for the data from the two products.	Contact BMC Customer Support requesting BladeLogic Server Automation 8.0 SP2

BPM/BPA

Issue	Description	Fix
QM001609002	BPM has no concept of Virtual Hosts. Therefore when it sets TokenID for a BMC_ComputerSystem it uses the format defined for Physical Hosts. The reconciliation of this data with data from other providers that are aware of virtualization will fail if you reconcile the BPM data after another discovery provider. This will result in duplicate CIs.	BMC Performance Manager Portal 2.7.00.040

BBCA

Issue	Description	Fix
SW00355355	Serial number is a strong indicator of identity for the BMC_ComputerSystem and is therefore used in reconciliation. On older Solaris Sparc platforms serial number is not available. BBCA would set the serial number to a value derived from hostid of the BMC_ComputerSystem class. In this situation duplicate BMC_ComputerSystem CIs would be created.	Fixed in BMC BladeLogic Client Automation 8.1.01
SW00355361	isVirtual attribute incorrectly set to `No` for Physical system. In this situation duplicate BMC_ComputerSystem CIs will be created.	Fixed in BMC BladeLogic Client Automation 8.1.01

Known Issues in the default BMC Atrium CMDB Mapping files

Since the release of ADDM 8.1.01 two issues have been identified in the default ADDM Integration Mappings. Both can be addressed in an existing deployment of ADDM 8.1.01 by updating the default mappings. See the Known Defects in this Version for details

Untested integration with ARS Server Group

A BMC Remedy Action Request System (BMC Remedy ARS) Server Group enables you to share a single database shared between multiple BMC Remedy ARS/BMC Atrium CMDB servers. Integration between BMC Atrium Discovery and such a server group has not been tested and is not supported by BMC Software.

BMC Software