DCE Sensor Merging/ Database merging

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

This question was originally posted on DCIM Support by Waseem Khan on 2018-07-31

I have a query related to the DCE system for one of our customer

Let me give you the detailed structure of our system

We have 17 sites of BMS which we have integrated with our system DCE

We are using 1 server for DCE and almost more than 8000 sensors are integrated for 17 BMS sites (virtual sensors not the apc)

We have created 17 separate DCE virtual machines in 1 server (each DCE has its own IP)

But our plan is to merge all DCE VM into 1 VM, which means merging all sensors of each site into 1 IP (into 1 DCE)

We have placed Protocol converters which are directly communicating with the BMS sites through Bacnet Protocol (We normally enter the IP address of the BMS system and Bacnet instance number in the PC converters) than the OID'S are generated and same OID'S we manually add into the DCE and via ETL integration we add it up on DCO

This is how the system is working ?

So instead of 17 DCE we need only 1 that is the idea

But my concern is that the database how it will be merged into one for 17 sites

We have manually created the virtual sensors each DCE has more than 300 sensors

Is it possible to merge all into 1 like copying or any solution?

Because if we will create 1 DCE how we are going to copy the data of the other 16 sites

We cannot manually enter again and create virtual sensors it will be a long process again then ?

Kindly suggest if its possible then how ?

If not then we need the detailed explanation, why its not possible and what are the risks ?

Regards

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

This answer was originally posted on DCIM Support by Ed Tarento on 2018-07-31

Hi Waseem

AFAIK no way to merge DBs and not sure about exporting virtual sensors. do that get created along with devices when exporting discovery entries? anyone?

in addition, depending on your polling frequency, you may find poor perf on a single combined system. make sure there is plenty of dedicated CPU & RAM and also important is IO performance check for this in iops (disk IOs per sec)

in the past I have recommended retaining old DCEs for historical data with polling stopped and polled on new DCE. u may consider overlapping polling to get some data into new DCE, eg one month

hope this helps

cheers

Ed

See Answer In Context

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

This answer was originally posted on DCIM Support by Ed Tarento on 2018-07-31

Hi Waseem

AFAIK no way to merge DBs and not sure about exporting virtual sensors. do that get created along with devices when exporting discovery entries? anyone?

in addition, depending on your polling frequency, you may find poor perf on a single combined system. make sure there is plenty of dedicated CPU & RAM and also important is IO performance check for this in iops (disk IOs per sec)

in the past I have recommended retaining old DCEs for historical data with polling stopped and polled on new DCE. u may consider overlapping polling to get some data into new DCE, eg one month

hope this helps

cheers

Ed

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

This comment was originally posted on DCIM Support by Steven Marchetti on 2018-07-31

Hi Waseem,

As Ed mentioned, there is no database merge option. A backup/restore will only restore that 1 server's info and if you try to restore a second server's backup, it will overwrite the first.

You can export the discoveries of each of the servers and create a file including all of the discoveries to import and re-run on the new server.

As for the virtual sensors, they can not be exported and imported individually. The new DCE would have no way of knowing what to use for sensors to add or average. When creating a virtual sensor, DCE does not look at each sensor OID and IP. It looks at the unique identifiers of the device and it's sensors. This unique identifier is specific to this instance of DCE and to the specific discovery. If you were to delete and rediscover a device, the unique identifiers would be different even on the same server so you can see how a new server would not be able to map these sensors...sorry. To get these sensors on a new server, you will have to manually recreate them.

Steve

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

This comment was originally posted on DCIM Support by Waseem Khan on 2018-07-31

Hi Ed

Thanks for your reply

I have attached the screen shot of one of our dce system you can see 550 devices (sensors) and there are 2 SNMP devices those are actually the Protocol Converters through which we are getting the readings by adding supplemental OID'S.

So similarly we have 17 DCE'S the idea is to make them in 1 IP (1 DCE) only combining almost 8000 sensors

But we don't want to add it manually again because it will be a long process again ?

Merging all the DCE'S is that possible ?

db of DCE is SQL or not ?

Regards

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

This comment was originally posted on DCIM Support by Steven Marchetti on 2018-07-31

Waseem,

As both Ed and I have stated, there is no way to merge the databases.

First, you do not have access to the database (psql). Secondly, the database only holds pointers to files and data that reside on the system as a computer directory structure so pulling database information would be of no use in the creation of a new server.

Steve

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

This comment was originally posted on DCIM Support by Waseem Khan on 2018-07-31

@Steven Marchetti Thanks for your answer

The subject is clear to me now

Regards

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-04

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