DX NetOps

Technical Tip:  How to pick up MAC address changes in Spectrum.

CA Spectrum Tech Tip by Shane Ryan, Support Engineer

Description:

A device's MAC address is read during the discovery and will be updated only if the network address changes.

So if a MAC address gets changed and the network address doesn t change for that management port then the change will not get picked up by Spectrum.

Solution:

To pick up the change in Spectrum, the Network Address must be changed (i.e change it another IP address and change it back to the original) or rediscover the device.

Hello ryash01. 

    I have a doubt about this.

    If we change a device modeled for a new device and we try a reconfigure model (without changing the IP previously) the mac address doesn´t change.

In the solutions you said that rediscovering the device the mac address should change. Please can you tell me where can be the problem?

Regards, Juan

I think that there´s another way to do this.

   You can reconfigure the model and edit manually the attibute "MAC_Address", and from there edit that value and change it for the correct one.

What do you think? Could it be usefull too, isn´t it?

This solution is for a few devices, but how can I update the mac address massively?
Individually temporarily change the IP address to renew the mac address, but is not practical for many devices.

Why not include the "re-read" of MAC-Address into the "reconfigure model" functionality?!

Our customers do not prefere to delete a model and re-discover it as a new device just in case of a device change of the same type/sysoid.

The events are gone, a lot of config-changes (from customizations) in oneclick needs to be redone, and more.

or include it on the "Reconfigure Model" command.

I confirm the workaround to change the IP-Address and set it back.
1) set IP-Address to another existing IP-Address
2) wait for alarms and set the IP-Address back
3) the MAC-Address should now be changed to the new MAC-Address.
Tested with Spectrum 9.4.2.1

This one doesn't work for me. I'm on 10.0. Any other options of changing the MAC without loosing all the history for that device by deleting and adding it once more?

as we have all MACs in a database of ours, we have a cron job that compares what is in our DB and what is in Spectrum, and that updates the mac found in Spectrum when needed, using vnmsh or REST API, and then triggers a reconfigure model. Like that we keep all the history.

That's just crazy enough to work. Heck if that was an Idea... it may just be crazy enough to get upvoted.

Hi all,

idea posted: Spectrum: reconfigure to update MAC addresses 

regards,
Raphael