Table of Contents

Swarming elements

With DataMiner Swarming, you can swarm basic elements from one DataMiner Agent to another within a cluster. You can do so in DataMiner Cube or via an Automation script.

When you are swarming an element so it gets hosted on a different DataMiner Agent, a temporary transition occurs. To indicate this, the following message will be displayed:

'ElementName' is currently swarming.
           More info

During this transition, the ability to open element cards or change element configuration for the involved element will be temporarily suspended. Once the element migration is complete, it will become accessible again.

Note
  • To be able to trigger swarming for an element, you need the Swarming user permission as well as config rights on the element.
  • Swarming is currently only possible with regular elements. See Limitations.

Swarming elements in DataMiner Cube

To swarm elements in DataMiner Cube:

  1. Go to System Center > Agents > Status and click the Swarm button in the lower right corner.

  2. On the left, select the element(s) you want to swarm.

  3. On the right, select the destination DMA.

  4. Click Swarm.

Swarming elements via Automation

Below you can find an example of how you can create an Automation script that can swarm an element from one DMA to another.

Tip

You can also find a ready-to-use Swarm Elements script in the Catalog or have a look at the SLC-AS-SwarmElements code on GitHub.

Script with fixed info

As a first step, create a short Automation script that will swarm a fixed element to a fixed destination:

  1. Create a new Automation script

  2. Collect the following information:

    • [element-key]: DMA ID/element ID pair for the element you want to swarm. You can find this information in the element properties window in DataMiner Cube.
    • [target-agent-id]: ID of the target DMA. You can find this on the System Center > Agents page.

  3. Add a C# code block with the contents below, replacing the placeholders with the values from the previous step.

    using System;
using System.Linq;
using Skyline.DataMiner.Automation;
using Skyline.DataMiner.Net;
using Skyline.DataMiner.Net.Swarming.Helper;

public class Script
{
  public void Run(Engine engine)
  {
    ElementID element = ElementID.FromString("[element-key]");
    int targetAgentId = [target-agent-id];

    var swarmingResults = SwarmingHelper.Create(Engine.SLNetRaw)
        .SwarmElement(element)
        .ToAgent(targetAgentId);

    var swarmingResultForElement = swarmingResults.First();  

    if (!swarmingResultForElement.Success)
    {
      engine.ExitFail($"Swarming failed: {swarmingResultForElement?.Message}");
    }
   }
}

  4. Execute the script to launch a swarming action for the specified element to the specified target host.

Code parts explained

Below you can find some more information about specific parts of the code in the example script above.

using Skyline.DataMiner.Net.Swarming.Helper;

This line pulls in the appropriate namespace for the SwarmingHelper type, which is used further down.

var swarmingResults = SwarmingHelper.Create(Engine.SLNetRaw)
    .SwarmElement(element)
    .ToAgent(targetAgentId);

The lines above communicate with SLNet to request a swarming action for a given element. As part of this action, the element will first be unloaded from the Agent where it was previously hosted and then loaded onto the new host.

var swarmingResultForElement = swarmingResults.First();  

if (!swarmingResultForElement.Success)
{
  engine.ExitFail($"Swarming failed: {swarmingResultForElement?.Message}");
}

The lines above deal with failures, if any.

Script with input parameters

In the example below, the script above is updated to use input variables instead of a fixed element and target Agent. This will make the script reusable for all element swarming actions.

  1. Add the following two script input parameters to the Automation script mentioned above:

    • Element Key
    • Target Agent ID

  2. Find the following code lines in the script:

    ElementID element = ElementID.FromString("[element-key]");
int targetAgentId = [target-agent-id];

  3. Replace these lines with the following lines:

    var element = ElementID.FromString(engine.GetScriptParam("Element Key").Value);
int targetAgentId = Int32.Parse(engine.GetScriptParam("Target Agent ID").Value);

You now have a script that can be invoked from anywhere, specifying an element and target DataMiner Agent.

The full script C# code should now look like this:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using Skyline.DataMiner.Automation;
using Skyline.DataMiner.Net;
using Skyline.DataMiner.Net.Swarming.Helper;

public class Script
{
  public void Run(Engine engine)
  {
    var element = ElementID.FromString(engine.GetScriptParam("Element Key").Value);
    int targetAgentId = Int32.Parse(engine.GetScriptParam("Target Agent ID").Value);
    
    var swarmingResults = SwarmingHelper.Create(Engine.SLNetRaw)
        .SwarmElement(element)
        .ToAgent(targetAgentId);

    var swarmingResultForElement = swarmingResults.First();  

    if (!swarmingResultForElement.Success)
    {
      engine.ExitFail($"Swarming failed: {swarmingResultForElement?.Message}");
    }
  }
}
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