Creating a Custom Vendor Certification › Understanding the Vendor Certification XML Structure › Basic Properties

Basic Properties

The basic properties of your custom vendor certification help to distinguish it from other custom vendor certifications you create. Also, these properties indicate from which vendor MIB you are collecting metric data.

Consider the following restrictions when you determine basic properties:

• The FacetType/name and FacetType/DisplayName properties must be unique for each vendor certification.
• The Protocol tag is always SNMP.
• Set the FacetType/descriptorClass property and all DataModel and FacetOf properties as shown in the example XML in the previous illustration.

FacetType/name

Uniquely identifies a vendor certification.

Recommendation: Conform to "<MibName><TableName>Mib."

Can be updated: No

Possible values: Alphanumeric and underscore. Dot and dash are not permitted.

The FacetType section manifests a particular vendor certification. The same XML document can contain multiple FacetType sections when those vendor certifications expose various aspects of the vendor-specific device such as TCP and UDP statistics from a MIB-2 implementation.

The FacetType section contains some basic properties. For example, this section contains the name of the vendor MIB, followed by one or more AttributeGroup sections. These AttributeGroup sections define which attributes this certification uses from the MIB. Finally, there are one or more ExpressionGroup sections that map attributes from the AttributeGroup sections to the metrics specified in a metric family.

FacetType/Documentation

Describes what is certified with the vendor certification.

Recommendation: Include the details about the vendor, MIB name, and table name.

Can be updated: Yes

Possible values: Plain text

Effect of updating: None

FacetType/MIB

Specifies the name of the MIB, which the DEFINITIONS clause defines in the ASN.1 file.

Recommendation: Conform to "<MibName>”

Can be updated: Yes

Possible values: Plain text

Effect of updating: Change to the “SNMP MIB Name” column in the Vendor Certification tab of the Administrator user interface.

When does the update take effect: Immediately

Required actions for updates to take effect: Refresh the user interface.

FacetType/DisplayName

Specifies the name of the vendor certification as it displays in CA Performance Center.

Recommendation: Start with the vendor name and include the MIB and functionality information.

Can be updated: Yes

Possible values: Plain text

Effect of updating: A change to the name in the Administrator user interface.

When does the update take effect: Immediately

Required actions for updates to take effect: Refresh the user interface.