Managing Attributes and Objects > Managing Attributes
  
Version 10.1.01
Managing Attributes
You can add any number of attributes, and they can represent any characteristic. Ensure that you provide a descriptive name for the attribute and for the attribute values so that all users understand the intent of the attribute. The Inventory view uses attributes as a way for you to organize your view.
To manage attributes
1. Select Admin > Advanced > Attributes.
2. See Adding Attributes for details about the columns shown on this page.
3. In the Attribute Management page, several functions are available, depending on the domain ownership: Add, Edit, Delete.
Adding Attributes
Editing or Renaming Attributes
Deleting Attributes
Setting Attributes on Hosts
To further define a report’s scope and search criteria, you can define custom attributes with discrete values. Attributes are characteristics of your hosts. You can add any number of attributes, and they can represent any characteristic. These attributes provide an additional method for including and excluding data in a report.
Attributes provide a way of defining a set of objects that share a certain characteristic. Attributes represent logical relationships between objects and their relevant characteristics. Typically, you’ll set up attributes to aid in defining the scope of a report. For example, you might set up a “maintenance contract” attribute that you can associate with the hosts for which you have service coverage. Or, you might create an attribute to organize hosts by geographical location so that the administrators responsible for the hosts at each corporate location can generate reports for their specific sites.
You can select hosts in bulk and assign or modify attributes associated with them. Use basic or advanced search to create a results set with the hosts you’d like to modify. For example, you can create a search query to find all Windows 2008 R2 systems as reported by NetBackup. When the search results are displayed, you can quickly apply a custom attribute such as patch applied.
Adding Attributes
When you add an attribute, a validation process ensures that the attribute does not exist in the domain’s single hierarchy path. Duplicate attribute names are allowed only in sibling domain hierarchies. See Attribute Inheritance.
To add attributes
Refer to Attribute-Naming Rules, About Attributes, and Understanding the Attribute Management View.
1. Select Admin > Advanced > Attributes.
2. From the drop‑down list, select the domain to which you want to add the attribute. Your domain is displayed by default. Typically, only one domain is available and this domain selection is required only for multi-tenancy environments, such as Managed Services Partners (MSPs). When you add or delete attributes, you do so globally for your domain and all child domains. See also Attribute Inheritance Overrides.
3. Click Add. The Add Attribute dialog is displayed.
4. Enter a name (see Attribute-Naming Rules).
5. Enter a comma-separated list of values for the Attribute. Values must be unique and are case-insensitive. The order in which you enter the values, is the order they are listed for selection in the Portal.
For example, if you enter the values Santa Cruz, Capitola, Soquel and Aptos for the Location attribute, that is how they are listed for selection when you assign them in the Report Scope. This unsorted order is determined when you create the values. The following screen shot shows an example of the unsorted values.
You can choose to have the values sorted. By sorting, the values will be displayed alphabetically in the Portal.
6. Click Sort to alphabetically sort the values when displayed in the Portal. Attributes and values are displayed in:
The Inventory. See Setting Attribute Values in the Inventory List View.
Report Scope. See Configuring Report Scope with Attributes.
Object Maintenance. See Assign Attributes Using Object Maintenance.
7. Enter an optional description. The description will be displayed in the Dynamic Template Designer when you are creating report templates.
8. Uncheck the Allow Inheritance if you do not want child domains to inherit this attribute’s values. The Allow Inheritance checkbox is checked by default to set a flag that enables child domains to inherit the attribute’s values.
When inheritance is disabled, users in sub-domains will be able to see the attribute, but they will not be able to see values in the Inventory or in a report scope. However, an administrator at the sub-domain or parent level can override the values of the attribute, making the attribute’s values available to the sub-domain. See Override Inherited Attribute Values.
9. Click OK in the Add Attributes dialog. The new attribute is displayed.
Editing or Renaming Attributes
Refer to Attribute-Naming Rules, About Attributes, and Understanding the Attribute Management View.
To edit attributes
Not all attribute details can be modified. For example, System Attribute details cannot be modified, but the list of values (LOV) assigned to them can be changed. The Domain can also restrict who can modify attributes. Attributes that can be fully modified are displayed in the Portal in bold.
If the user-defined attribute was created within your StorageConsole Domain, the attribute name, values, and description can all be modified. Most environments have only a single Domain. However, for multi-tenancy environments, where a hierarchy of Domains is used to partition data, you are not permitted to modify attribute names in child Domains. You can modify the inheritance flag and the list of values of an attribute that was inherited from a parent. See also, Attribute-Naming Rules and Attribute Inheritance.
Note that when you modify the name, a validation check is made to ensure that the name you enter does not conflict with an existing attribute in your Domain hierarchy.
1. Select Admin > Advanced > Attributes.
2. (Multi-tenancy/multi-domain environments) From the drop‑down list, select the Domain in which the attribute resides.
3. Select the attribute. Bold attribute names indicate that the attribute can be fully edited.
4. Click Edit.
5. Modify the name and/or description.
6. Modify the Attribute Values. These must be comma-separated and unique. They are case-insensitive. The order in which you enter the values, is the order they are listed for selection in the portal.
For example, if you enter the values Santa Cruz, Capitola, Soquel and Aptos for the Location attribute, that is how they are listed for selection when you assign them in the Report Scope. This natural order is determined when you create the values. You can choose to have the values alphabetically sorted.
7. Click Sort to alphabetically sort the values when displayed in the Portal. Attributes and values are displayed in:
The Inventory. See Setting Attribute Values in the Inventory List View.
Report Scope. See Configuring Report Scope with Attributes.
Object Maintenance. See Assign Attributes Using Object Maintenance.
Note: For System Attributes, only the list of values and the Allow Inheritance flag can be modified. For attributes inherited from a parent, you can modify only the list of values and the inheritance flag. You are not permitted to modify attribute names in child Domains. See Attribute Inheritance.
8. In the Edit Attribute dialog, click Save.
Deleting Attributes
Refer to Attribute-Naming Rules, About Attributes, and Understanding the Attribute Management View.
Note: When you delete an attribute, it will continue to be available as a column in the Inventory view. Refresh the Inventory to access the most up-to-date list of attributes.
To delete attributes
1. Select Admin > Advanced > Attributes.
2. (Multi-tenancy/multi-domain environments) From the drop‑down list, select the Domain from which you want to remove the attribute.
3. Select the attribute. Click Delete.
If the attribute is in use by a Dynamic Template, you will be prompted to confirm that you really want to delete the attribute. If you choose to delete an attribute that is in use, the template will no longer work as designed.
System Attributes cannot be deleted.
Attributes inherited from a parent can only be deleted by an administrator of the Domain where the attribute was created.
Attribute-Naming Rules
See also, Managing Attributes, Examples of Attributes and Values, and Attribute Inheritance.
Adhere to the following rules when creating attribute names. Attributes are validated against these rules so that there are no conflicts in the database, such as duplicates or the use of Oracle reserved words.
Limit the length to 30 characters.
Begin the name with an alphabetic character.
Use only alpha, numeric, or underscore characters in the name. Spaces and special characters other than underscores are not allowed in attribute names, although they are allowed in the list of values (LOV) for an attribute.
Names are not case-sensitive.
Do not use Oracle reserved words. See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E15817_01/appdev.111/b31231/appb.htm. To list the Oracle reserved words, use this SQLPlus query at the command line:
SQL> SELECT * from v$reserved_words;
Attribute names within a domain hierarchy must be unique.
Examples of Attributes and Values
Refer to Attribute-Naming Rules, About Attributes, and Understanding the Attribute Management View.
 
Table 1 Example Attributes and Attribute Values
Attribute Name
Possible Values
Purpose
Application
SAP
Exchange
Data based on the software application running on the host.
Asset_Tag
0001234
0001235
For asset management purposes, perhaps you want to report on backup servers by asset tag.
Backup_Server
BackupServer1
BackupServer2
You will certainly want to report on backup servers/clients based on the backup server that backs up the backup server/clients’ user data. Backup Server is the most common attribute, which is why the Portal creates a default group to represent this characteristic.
Business_Unit
Marketing
Accounting
Backup servers/hosts often contain backups of data owned by users from specific business groups (for example, Marketing).
CPU
Opteron
UltraSPARC
If you need to know how your backups are performing on your backup servers with specific CPUs, simply run reports based on this attribute.
Location
 
Americas
Asia
If you are responsible for hosts in a region, you can select a scope for your region. It may make sense to set up host groups by geographical location or, as an alternative, create an attribute to group hosts by location.
Country_Code
004
248
You can be very specific about the location of hosts that you have spread throughout the world.
Host_Type
Production
Test Server
This attribute can represent production vs. test machines. Data on production systems is critical to your business. Test data is important, too, but you might want to know how data is being produced on your production systems particularly.
SysAdmin
Alix
Emily
Hosts are managed by this person.
OS
Linux
Windows
Mac
If you need to roll out patches for a particular operating system, you can quickly determine when the user data on those hosts will be backed up. Your values can be general or specific (for example, Solaris 10).