Cisco Fibre Switch Interface Descriptions removed following Rescan

[StorageMgr]

I had just setup SNMP v3 on two of my Cisco MDS 9148S switches yesterday. I did a network scan and was pleasantly surprised to see the Description column populated with the descriptions I had entered. I then decided to add more relevant information into the descriptions. I added the WWPN to some of the description. This morning when I checked the switches after a rescan, the entries, both the original and the ones I updated are gone. Now the Description column just list fc1/#  where # is the port number, nothing else.

There are no scan errors. MDS9100 series documentation stated that 32 characters were supported but didn't see this until after several entries exceeded that. But in the CLI when I did a show interface description, my full entries were save. So that has me wondering if there is some limit on the Lansweeper side that is preventing the descriptions from being captured or displayed? This doesn't seem to be the case since the second switch, where no changes to description were made, also had it's entries cleared.

[StorageMgr · Accepted solution]

I found the answer to my question. It had nothing to do with the Rescan. I had changed the Asset Type from Switch to Fibre Switch, and that changed the Columns displayed. It wasn't that the Description column changed, it was that the Name and Alias columns were hidden. Simply changing the Asset type back to Switch restored the columns.

My confusion was the result of name swaps used by Cisco and Lansweeper, and not noticing the columns going missing when I made the asset type change. The information stored as Description on the switch is displayed in a column labeled Alias, which is a completely different value stored on the switch. MDS switches used a device-alias name to refer to a WWPN because it much easier to enter an alias than a WWPN when configuring zones.

I guess I'll just keep the "wrong" Asset type so I can continue to see the alias information.