Excluding (Filtering) Nodes
IO provides the ability to further refine the topology you are viewing after selecting one or more starting entities. This allows you to more effectively manage the scope of the topology that you are viewing.
You can further restrict what you are visualizing by using the “exclude” feature to filter entities that you want to temporarily remove from the topology view. When you filter out entities, you also temporarily remove the downstream datapath of the entity.
Steps
In the topology map, click the entity you wish to filter.
A popup menu appears, and some related entities in the map might be deemphasized, appearing grayed out.
Select “Exclude this <entity type>” option.
The entity is added to the Excluded Entities list and is removed from the topology map.
When filtering out an entity, all of the entities in the downstream datapath are also excluded, unless they are in the datapath of another included entity.
Repeat as desired to filter out additional entities.
To remove the filter:
Hover over the entity name in the Excluded Entities list.
Click the x icon associated with the name.
The excluded entity is removed from the list and the topology map reapplies the entity and all its paths.
Example
Assume you have the following environment:
3 Hosts: Host 1, Host 2, and Host 3
2 Applications: Application A and Application B
1 Tier: Tier 1
Application A and Application B are members of Tier 1
Host 1 and Host 2 are members of Application A
Host 2 and Host 3 are members of Application B
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Scenario 1
You select Fibre Channel in the topology View field. Under “Show Infrastructure Related to” you select Tier as the entity type and Tier 1 as the starting entity instance. A topology displays (see General Topology above) with Tier 1, Applications A and B, and Hosts 1, 2, and 3.
If you filter out Application A, you see Tier 1, Application B, Hosts 2 and 3. You still see Host 2 because it is also a member of Application B, however you won’t see Host 1 since that was in the downstream datapath from Application A, which was filtered out.
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Scenario 2:
Again, you select Fibre Channel in the topology View field, but you select Host as the entity type and Hosts 1, 2, and 3 as the starting entities. The initial general topology looks similar to the one above, but because the entity type is Host, the perspective is from the hosts.
If you then filter out Application A, you would see Host 1 without a connection to Tier 1. The Tier 1 connection is excluded because it comes after Application A from the perspective of Host 1.
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