NCM Dynamic Groups

Question

We are currently runing CiscoWorks Network Compliance Manager 1.3.SP2 (Build 4755-070308) and our dynamic groups are limited by 10 "Search  Criteria" and because some of the devices dont follow the same naming standard and NCM is case sensitive I am having issues getting all the correct devices into the correct groups.  Is there a way to use linux grep commands to add devices to groups?  I see NCM has a command line but it does not appear to allow any type of grep or regular expression commands.

Answer 1

Hey josephenix, it sounds like you have a very reasonable need and use.  Be aware that dynamic groups do require higher CPU resources because of the need to process conditional logic on the device inventory.  I would think that having 10 conditional rules puts you at the extreme case.
I can appreciate your need to have the inventory dynamically updated as multiple users are adding/changing things.  However, you might be negatively impacting normal use with your current process.
I might suggest this...
Using the method I described earlier, connect to the NCM proxy and issue a 'list device" - this will get you a list of all devices in inventory - put this into an array.  Iterate over the array and send each into a query for the NCM proxy with command "list groups -type device -host $DEVICENAME" - this will show you the device groups the device is in - this can go into another array.  You can use your Linux grep commands to determine if it's in the right group.  Then use the 'add device to group' command we discussed earlier, if it isn't in the right group.
You could automate/cron this to run once every 2 hours or so.  This would allow you to programmatically map devices to static device groups and get the benefits of performance with that, but still allow you some flexibility in dynamic naming...
I hope that helps!