Collector Profiles

A Collector Profile is a reusable, named policy that decides which collector does the active work for a device — reachability checks and metric polling. Instead of pinning devices to collectors one at a time, you define a profile once and apply it to a network or an individual device; edit the profile later and every device using it picks up the change immediately.

This only affects active polling

Profiles control reachability checks and metric polling — not log or trap reception. Any collector that receives a syslog message or SNMP trap for a device still accepts and ships it, regardless of which collector’s profile owns that device. A device with no active-polling collector still shows up in Logs & Log Search if something is sending to it.

The two modes

Mode	What it does
Auto	Spreads devices evenly across every collector assigned to the device’s network, and automatically re-balances if one goes down. Optionally designate one collector as a backup-only standby — it’s left out of normal load-balancing and only takes over polling when every other collector on the network is down.
Static	Pins every device using the profile to one named primary collector. Optionally add a backup collector that takes over if the primary goes down, and choose whether polling auto-fails-back to the primary once it recovers.

Auto is the default and the right choice for most setups — it needs no maintenance as you add or remove collectors from a network. Reach for Static when you need a specific device (or group of devices) to always be polled by one particular collector, regardless of what else is on the network — for example, a collector with a special credential or a device that must stay on a known, predictable path.

Where a profile applies

A profile can be set at three levels, and the most specific one wins:

1. Device override — set directly on a device (its edit panel → Collector Profile (override)). Takes priority over everything else.
2. Network default — set on a network (Configure → Sites & Networks → open the network → Collector Profile). Applies to every device in that network that doesn’t have its own override.
3. Tenant default — every account starts with a built-in Auto (default) profile that covers any device not covered by the two levels above. You can mark a different profile as the tenant default instead, but there’s always exactly one, and it can’t be deleted.

So in the common case you don’t need to touch this page at all — the tenant default handles everything automatically. Reach for a network-level or device-level profile when a specific network or device needs different failover behavior.

Managing profiles

Go to Configure → Collector Profiles.

• New Profile — name it, choose Auto or Static, and pick the collector(s) involved. Only collectors that have completed enrollment are selectable — even if currently offline.
• The list shows each profile’s mode, its primary/backup collectors (or “load balanced” for Auto), and how many devices currently use it.
• Edit a profile to change its collectors or mode — every device using it re-evaluates its owning collector right away.
• A profile in use can be deleted; its devices simply fall back to their network’s or the tenant’s default policy. The tenant default profile itself can’t be deleted.

Automatic recovery

When a collector a profile relies on goes down, GridNMS automatically hands its devices to a healthy backup or peer (as described above) — no action needed. When that collector comes back, GridNMS waits for roughly ten minutes of reliable check-ins before handing devices back, so a collector that’s still flaky right after reconnecting doesn’t immediately reclaim work it can’t yet handle. A collector is considered down after a few consecutive missed check-ins, not on the first one — so a brief network blip doesn’t trigger a failover.

If a static pin doesn’t match a device’s network

A static profile’s primary or backup collector should be one that’s actually assigned to the device’s network — otherwise the pin is a configuration error: GridNMS still records it (so nothing silently reroutes to a different collector), and the device’s page flags that the pinned collector doesn’t cover its network. Fix this by either assigning the collector to that network (see Networks & Sites) or pointing the profile at a collector that already covers it.

Related pages

• Networks & Sites — assign collectors to the networks they’re allowed to reach; profiles choose among those assignments.
• Monitoring & Managing Collectors — check whether a collector is online before troubleshooting a profile.