topic Auto Populating System Manager View via remote DFM database in Active IQ Unified Manager Discussions

Auto Populating System Manager View via remote DFM database

JERROD_FINN — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:27:24 GMT

Basically what I'm trying to accomplish is to have a central OnCommand installation with a handful of System Manager installations at different sites. But, Instead of having the users log into System Manager and discover or add systems by hand I'd prefer to pre-populate their view so when System Manager is launched it's all up-to-date. I've done this on a system that both DFM and System Manager are installed on, but I need to figure out how to query DFM by a system other than where the application is running. I saw where you can build up URLs and pull the information, but that only seems to work in IE not in other browsers or a CLI.

Has anyone done anything similar to this? I'm flexible as to which operating system the applications will run on as this will be a new solution.

Re: Auto Populating System Manager View via remote DFM database

adaikkap — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:42:46 GMT

Thats a good suggestion. BTW say if your Oncommand Unified Manager has 100 Controllers do you add all the 100 it to each of your System Manager or just only a part of it ?

Some might find this as a security breach. As the encryption/decryption algorithm needs to be same or shared across the products like SM and OC UM.

Regards

adai

Re: Auto Populating System Manager View via remote DFM database

amirm — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:58:41 GMT

Hi Jerrod,

If DFM server has SSL server running then you can probably configure passwordless ssh login and run remotely " ssh <dfm-server> dfm host list" command from remote host to query the controllers in DFM DB remotely.

Then from these list of hosts you can decide how to distribute them among SM instances.

Regards,

-Amir

Re: Auto Populating System Manager View via remote DFM database

JERROD_FINN — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:43:40 GMT

Amir,

I've actually done it via ssh and that does work, I was just hoping I might be able to do it without using a third party application. For linux based installation using ssh isn't that big of a deal since everything you need is probably already present. However, with a Windows based setup I had to install an ssh client. It would be nice if NetApp provided a dfm command set that allowed for remote queries.

Re: Auto Populating System Manager View via remote DFM database

amirm — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:45:31 GMT

Hi Jerrod,

I think you have two options for Windows:

1. Use Powershell 2.0 later with Windows Remote Management 2.0(comes pre-installed with Win2K8R2 & Win7) and run DFM commands remotely.

2. Use NMSDK DFM API - "host-list-info-iter-start" to get the list of the hosts in DFM.

This way you can avoid installing any third party app on DFM server.

Regards,

-Amir

Re: Auto Populating System Manager View via remote DFM database

adaikkap — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:27:28 GMT

Hi Jerrod,

I misunderstood you problem. Looks like you only want a list of controllers from OnCommand and add them to your System Manager. Is that right ?

If that's the case you can create a db user as follows and run your query via port 2638.

To access the embedded DataFabric Manager database for information rather than using the DataFabric Manager canned reports:

Create a database user using the command dfm database user create.

Enable access for the user created abov

Run the desired SQL query for getting the LUN information using the command dfm databasquery run <SQL-Query>.

This way you can get the list of host. The db views are documented under help general help of Operations Manager Console.

More info on access to dfm db is available at the following TR.

TR 3690 - Access to DataFabric Manager and Performance Advisor Data Using Database Access and Data Export

Regards

adai