Duplicate Objects

Question

Does anyone know what the issue is with vFoglight when it duplicates all of the objects from vCenter?  This is the second time I've seen this now and in discussions with others who run vFoglight in their shop, it has happened to them as well.  Not only is it a complete annoyance, but dashboards made for specific VMs all of a sudden stop working because their new data becomes associated with the new VM object in vFoglight.  I went from 4.4k machines in one vCenter to 8.8k over the weekend.  Is there an easy way to delete the duplicated objects and get data flowing to the original objects again so I don't have to redo a whole bunch of dashboards and reports?

DELL-Thomas B · Accepted Answer

The only way I've seen it happen is if you moved/removed/added the hosts to an existing vCenter, did a new vCenter install vs. upgrade or change the names in our data collectors.  We look at the UUID of the VMs for their uniqueness.  I would suggest opening up a support case and have them take a look at a support bundle from the FMS and from the data collector.

john_s_main · Accepted Answer

In the vFoglight topology structure, objects are not unique by name, but rather by managedObjectReference, virtualCenter.name, and virtualCenter.vcUniqueId.

Duplicate objects can result from:

re-creating/changing a vmwarePerformanceAgent -> properties-> Host Name field in any way. (This is the only field subject to this restriction.)
- It is mandatory that this remain identical, or Foglight will think you are connecting to a completely new VC, and build a whole new topology structure in Foglight.
- resist any temptation to try to correct this specific field's text.
  - Changing from FQDN to IP, short name to FQDN, or any other change, however minor, in this field's text is going to cause you a lot of pain.
- if necessary, you can work around VC server changes by changing the FGLAM server Hosts file to alias whatever text is in this field to the correct VC IP address.

Other things which can cause duplicate objects:

moving things between VCs
detaching/attaching things to VCs
changing the VC uniqueId in Virtual Center
- (there is a separate topology churn issue related to having two different VCs set to the same VC uniqueId, so watch out for that as well)

Except for the first item, these are all VMware issues, not Foglight issues.

(Foglight could do more to 'cover' for VMware, it's true, and there are efforts in that direction being discussed.)

DELL-Thomas B · Answer

They duplicate if you remove/replace/re-add the vCenter and don't use the same name (FQDN vs. NETBIOS name for example).  You will need to ensure the name matches exactly and it should update.  Once that is done the 'stale' objects can be removed with the stale objects script.

MtnDewKing · Answer

This was on two different vCenters in two different vFoglight installations that were not touched other than possibly a reboot of the vCenter server and were not removed/re-added to vFoglight.  They have been collecting data for months and then decided to create duplicate objects in vFoglight.  Both vCenter objects in vFoglight show the exact same name so I'm mystified as to how this happened.

Virtualization Infrastructure Management

Duplicate Objects

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