Managing Map Customizations

Rule number one for managing map customizations is that they are intended to preserve the location of icons only in the Internet submap. Don’t customize the contents of subnets because this information is not saved. Nor are manually added connectors. Don’t assume that other customizations will be preserved. All that happens when you import a map customization file is that ovw moves icons on the Internet view to their previous locations. Any objects inside icons on the Internet submap are simply placed inside them according to the current database. Since objects are identified by their selection names, changing selection names isn’t a good idea, either.

Rule number two is to export map customizations whenever you make a change to a production map. Then back it up to a safe place. Don’t assume the nightly backup script will run in time to save your work.

Rule number three is to keep the number of maps to an absolute minimum. Discourage the notion that users can create their own custom maps even if they are not meant for production use. The ideal number of maps is one. Of course, if the user community needs distinctly unique maps, you have to provide them. The more open read/write maps, the more system overhead.

Rule number four is to automatically schedule (use cron) at least a weekly database consistency check and repair:

• terminate all ovw sessions

• stop the netmon process

• ovw -mapcount -vuDR

• ovtopofix -csh

Rather than rephrase it, let’s read from the ovw man page: “ovw -mapcount is a troubleshooting command that checks the consistency between the map database maintained by ovw and the object database maintained by ovwdb. It checks the values of map reference counts stored in the object database and corrects these values, if necessary.” No other ovw sessions should be running at this time.

Again from the man page: “The ovtopofix command is used to detect and correct inconsistencies that may have developed between the IP topology database maintained by ovtopmd and the database maintained by ovwdb for the ovw command.” The netmon daemon must be stopped while ovtopofix runs.