It is known that a DMA which is added to a DMS needs to have the same version. The ports for inter-communication need to be open (NATS). What else needs to be checked before this DMA can be added? I've heard you may lose the users and views. Is there a guide available?
Hi Dominik,
We normally don't recommend to add existing DMA's to a DMS, as during the merge you can have conflicts with the view IDs, protocol versions, element names, etc.
In case you need to merge 2 systems, would be necessary to make a propper assesment on what is in the "master" DMS to then copy protocols, create views, automations, correlations, etc., and make all necessary preparation to "receive" the new data.
Then you can also export your element data from the DMA to be added so you can import it again when it is in cluster.
The DMA to be added should be cleaned up (we have a tool for that https://community.dataminer.services/documentation/factory-reset-tool) so then it can be added following the guide:
Adding a DataMiner Agent to a DataMiner System | DataMiner Docs
After that you will need to add the elements again using your exported packages or create them from scratch.
As you can see this could be a much more complicated process specially because there's a lot of details you need to consider to make it successfully.
Don't hesitate to contact the team in charge of your account so they can guide you.
PS: additionally, if views aren’t needed, you could look into exporting elements in .csv, remove the first 2 columns, and create all your elements in the destination DMS – this means you’ll have previously verified that all the required protocols have been loaded in the DMS and that the new hosting DMA has got sufficient network access to be able to reach the equipment polled by the legacy DMA
Quoting Edson on this – I would add that this is also the reason why a good functional analysis of the system is always helpful when considering using more than one cluster: starting playing with two clusters is very easy… but leads to a technology eco-monster if the 2 systems were meant to be used by the same operations team (where operators end up having to know which DMS has to be used for which platform monitoring).
Clustering back is pretty much something that requires effort and the longer it takes to decide for this move, the harder it will become (as different clusters tend to expand with multiple DMAs in each).
However, technically speaking, especially if it is just one agent and the destination cluster has got the required capacity licensed, this can be achieved with a few operations: could use DELT export to make packages (e.g. view by view) and then import the “.import” files in the destination cluster;
wipe clean the DMA and then cluster it with the big one as a “fresh install”.
But you need to define the new Surveyor hierarchy.
Note that is not too different from exporting configured views from a staging DMA to a production DMS. I’ve done this (exporting staging config to prod) very frequently and elements even keep the DMA id of the system where they were created, so you can easily tell which ones comes from the migrated DMA.
On the other hand, if you have a full DMA and not enough capacty, another option (that I’m sure any TAM will mention) is to get a new DMA clustered (fresh install), migrate elements (views and protocols) and then decommission the one you no longer need.
HTH