Avoiding duplicate devices

In Infrastructure Management, a device can be created in the following ways:

• Through one of the following adapters: 
  • BMC Portal Adapter 
  • System Center Operation Manager (SCOM) Adapter 
  • BMC Transaction Management Application Response Time (BMC TM ART) Adapter 
  • IBM Tivoli Monitoring 
  • HP Operations Manager 
• Manually by using the Administration Console or a Command Line Interface command. 
• Integrating with the BMC Atrium CMDB.

When duplicate devices are created

If multiple sources that use different naming conventions are used to create the devices, duplicate devices can result. For example, if the Portal adapter uses the host name of the computer where the device is located to name the device and the BMC Atrium CMDB uses the IP address of the computer where the device is located to name the device, then duplicate device instances would be created in Infrastructure Management.

When duplicate devices are not create

Duplicate devices are not created in the following situations:

• Devices are created by only one source. 
• Devices are created from different sources independently. 
• The different sources use the same naming convention when creating the devices; for example, IP address, host name, or fully qualified domain name. 
• Device aliases are created by using alias formulas 

Recommendations for device creation

To avoid creating duplicate devices:

• Ensure that the device is created using the fully qualified domain name of the host computer where the device is located. 
• Ensure that if the device is referenced from multiple adapters that each adapter uses the fully qualified domain name of the device.