You maybe running into the following scenario with AtriumCore 8.1.

You've just configured new qualificaitons or change your Identification Rules for ComputerSystem, saved them and ran the RE Job, but oddly the job did not do what you expected. In fact it has been processing data exactly as before.

There is a reason for this and it has to do with the following: 

1. AR Server being in a Server Group and being administered through the midtier. 

2. RE metadata has a delay in synching between servers in server group. RE metadata is basically what the AR Server keeps in the database that includes information from AR DB Configuration (ARDBC), Server Group Ranking Form and the actual RE Job configuration that includes ID Rules, Merge Preferences, Dataset info and so on.

3. AR Signaling maybe set to be disabled

Let's check couple factors to make sure that this symptom matches your experience and culprit.

Legacy ID:KA415922

Here is how to find out what is going on: 

First check to see if RE is configured properly in the Ranking form. (See Article Number 000096329 ) 

Next you need to see about the AR Signal setting and make sure it is not disabled in your server group. This would prevent the RE metadata from synching between servers quickly.

Use the above info to find which server is set to be RE Primary and then go to that AR Server and check the ar.cfg (ar.conf if Linux/Windows) and check this value: 

RE-Debug-Level:

Value enumerations go as follows: 

1 - ERROR

3 - INFO

5 - Debug

Now connect to the Reconciliation console through the midtier and change the RE Logging severity to a different value from the present one.

For example if it was RE-Debug-Level: 5, then change it to RE-Debug-Level: 1 and save the change.

Now go back to the ar.cfg that you found to be RE primary and see if the value for RE-Debug-Level:  has changed from the previous value.

If it has changed then good and this is not the issue for your RE Job misbehavior. However, most midtiers are setup to connect what we define as User facing servers which almost always will not the be the RECON primary server. This then means that your metadata for RE is only being saved in the User facing server and never gets sent to the actual recon engine that reconcilies the data. If it does, it does so with delay of about 5 minutes, which is also the default synch interval for the Recon Engine synchronization with AR Server.

OK, so now that you know this, let's talk about how to address it. The methods vary and I'll try to cover them all and let you chose the one you're most comfortable with: 

Method one: 

Create an Admin only midtier that connects to ARS where RE is the primary. Give access to this midtier to CMDB Admin only. This is a good solution if the CMDB Admin has no access to the server directly. 

Method two: 

Use the AR User Tool (yes, we've officially discontinued support for this thick client, but its use is still very popular) and connect directly to the RE Primary server and make your changes that way in CMDB:Console.

Method three: 

Use the midtier as is and reduce the synch interval to only 30 seconds and make sure to wait that long before you make any further changes. Make sure that AR Signaling is turned on. Here you can use the method with ar.cfg to see the change occur.

Basically, the Knowledge Article was created so that you can realize that the RE metadata synch is not instant for all servers in the server group. There is some delay and this delay will make it look like RE engine is misbehaving. Especially if you make several changes within the 5 minutes synch interval.

Another good method is to set RE to Debug (RE-Debug-Level: 5) and then kill the arrecond engine process on the server that is Primary. You can use the Task Manager on Windows or find arrecond in the process tree of Linux/Unix and kill the process ID. ARMonitor will load the engine right back in and AR Server will send the latest settings from its local cache. The arrecond.log will then reflect all the RE metadata as provided from the AR Server configuration data store. This data can and likely will be localized if signaling is disabled.

Please let us know if we can make this KA better! Rate and it send us feedback!

1. BMC Atrium CMDB Suite