I am investigating the option of creating driver that can read in an csv spreadsheet that contains a switch multicast routing table and then create a simulated element of the switch ports and what multicast group is connected to each port.
Dataminer does not have access to the switches directly but a script is run daily that produces a spreadsheet mapping source, group, IGMP information as seen in the image.
With this new simulated switch element, I could then fill in the missing switch elements when representing a visual service mapping. Currently it is difficult to know where multicast joins are being requested and this would solve the issue for mapping the entire service.
Hi Randy,
For sure there are drivers that can read CSV files, however I am not sure if there is a specific driver that will fit in your use case. I believe a possible option could be an automation script that can provision a DMA based on the content of the CSV file. The automation script will perform the following actions:
- Provision a DMA with elements based on the CSV file
- For the provisioned elements, set the switch ports and multicast groups for each port (and, if required, extra information that can be included from the CSV file)
The driver for the provisioned element could be dummy driver containing a table with enough column parameters to store data from the CSV file.
The automation script can be scheduled to be executed at a specific frequency (via scheduler task). This will help you to trigger the script when there is an update on the CSV file.
Hi Randy, Jens is doing almost exactly that in context of creating simulated demo's for DataMiner:
- He has created a driver (simulated driver) with the key tables for managing switches (routing table, IF table, and the likes)
- He has a mechanism to create elements including connectivity between ports (that mechanism will be included into IDP going forward). The network config is documented in a spreadsheet. Allows you to create an entire network, even if we do not manage that (remark : elements are created, so you need licenses -;))
- Managing flow data is next step we like to do together with setting up bookings. At present, we focus on bookings first because in our simulated demo, bookings would be the reference to manage the booked flows so to speak. But if needed, we can sync with Jens and maybe we can look into your use case first, meaning importing flow data from external. Definitely worth to evaluate