# Collecting Device Data (Polling)

Configuration
Polling Status And Freshness

Polling is a process responsible for collecting data on devices, such as data transfer usage, current load and power usage. The process is automatically run by the remote agent every 5 minutes. To assure accurate scalability of the application and even distribution of hardware resources, you can configure the remote agent so as to collect data on devices in a defined location, defined floor or defined rack cabinet. The polling section shows a list of devices on which data are collected using a remote agent.

# Configuration

Open Remote Agents, select an agent, open Polling, and choose Configuration. The configuration is divided into three tabs. Each tab has its own form and is saved separately.

# General

The General tab controls whether the agent polls devices and which devices belong to the agent's polling scope.

Polling Status – enables or disables polling for the Remote Agent.
Use in locations – a multiple-selection field that assigns the agent to locations. Devices assigned to the selected locations are included in polling.
Use in floors – a multiple-selection field for floors. Floors can complement the selected locations; floors outside the selected locations add their devices to the polling scope.
Use in racks – a multiple-selection field for rack cabinets. It works in the same way as the floor selector and can add racks outside the selected locations.
Use for devices – an autocomplete multiple-selection field for adding individual devices. Leave it empty for the standard configuration; use it for additional or custom polling scopes.

By default, the Remote Agent is not assigned to a location, floor, rack, or individual device. Select the relevant entities to define the scope for this agent.

# Device Status

The Device Status tab contains the Device Status Verification settings. They determine how the agent checks whether a device or its management controller is reachable and, when IPMI is available, whether the device is powered on.

Device Status Polling – enables or disables device status checks.
Status polling for device types – limits status checks to selected infrastructure device types. All Types is available for the default behaviour.
Verification Methods – select one or more methods. The available cards are:
- IP Address (fping) – checks the device IP address with fping.
- IPMI IP Address (fping) – checks the IPMI/BMC address with fping.
- Hostname (fping) – checks the hostname with fping.
- IPMI IP Address (ipmitool) – available when the IPMI Integration is enabled. If IPMI credentials are configured, the agent sends a chassis power status request. If IPMI returns an unknown result or fails, Redfish is used as a fallback.
Ping timeout (ms) – the timeout used for ICMP checks. The default is 500 ms.

The methods are executed in the order shown in the form. IP address, BMC address, and hostname checks can act as reachability fallbacks. If status polling is enabled, at least one verification method must be selected.

# SNMP & Redfish Polling

The SNMP & Redfish Polling tab contains settings for protocol-specific data collection. These settings are independent of the status verification methods in the Device Status tab.

SNMP polling for device types – limits SNMP collection to selected infrastructure device types. All Types is available for the default behaviour.
SNMP timeout (µs) – the timeout used for SNMP requests, in microseconds. The default is 1,000,000 µs.
Redfish Polling – enables or disables Redfish collection for the agent.
Redfish timeout (s) – the timeout used for Redfish requests, in seconds. The default is 5 s.

# Per-device polling settings

The agent configuration is the default for devices assigned to that Remote Agent. You can override the status verification methods for an individual device from the device edit form: open the device, select Edit, and open the Polling tab.

The form contains the following options:

Device Polling – enable or disable polling for this device.
Configuration Source – select Remote Agent to inherit the agent's configured methods, or Device to define an override for this device.
When Device is selected, choose one or more status methods: IP Address, IPMI IP Address, and Hostname. At least one method is required.

Changing the status methods on the Remote Agent affects devices using Remote Agent as their configuration source. Devices with a Device override keep their own selection. To remove an override, edit the device and change Configuration Source back to Remote Agent.

# Polling Status And Freshness

The polling status view helps administrators understand whether a Remote Agent is actively collecting data and whether the latest polling cycle is healthy.

Use it to check:

whether polling is enabled,
when the last polling cycle finished,
how long polling took,
how many devices were processed,
whether the agent API connection is healthy,
whether polling data is fresh, delayed, stale, or unavailable.

If the polling cycle is delayed or stale, EasyDCIM can show warnings in the Remote Agent summary and System Verifier. This usually means that the issue should be investigated at the Remote Agent level before checking individual device graphs.

Polling freshness is different from graph data freshness. Polling freshness tells you whether the agent ran recently. Graph freshness tells you whether a specific graph received new data points. A Remote Agent can be fresh while one graph is stale if only one protocol or device fails.

For graph-specific troubleshooting, see Graph Data Freshness.