How to deduplicate host data in reports

Deduplication changes how metrics-utility merges individual host records into countable managed nodes when building reports. Deduplication identifies identical hosts to ensure an accurate count of unique hosts.

metrics-utility tracks individual hosts based on their hostnames. It tracks any entries that use the same hostname as the host. Additional deduplication strategies are also available using the following environment variable: METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR=.

Deduplication in the RENEWAL_GUIDANCE report
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The RENEWAL_GUIDANCE report uses deduplication to merge several entries for the same managed node into a single entry. This is important to provide accurate counts of managed nodes for subscription renewal.

The default value for METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR=renewal. This is the original method, which analyzes host_name, ansible_host, ansible_product_serial, and ansible_machine_id separately, and merges entries any duplicated items.

METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR=renewal applies deduplication in multiple iterations. It is limited by the REPORT_RENEWAL_GUIDANCE_DEDUP_ITERATIONS environment variable, which defaults to 3.

You can also run METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR with the following environment variables:

  • METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR=renewal-hostname. This is similar to ccsp, again preferring ansible_host over host_name when present. No other fields are considered.
  • METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR=renewal-experimental. This is similar to ccsp-experimental, which first applies the hostname-based deduplication, then deduplicates again, merging when both of the serials match.

Deduplication in the CCSP or CCSPv2 reports
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When generating the CCSP or CCSPv2 reports, you can set deduplication options to avoid counting the same managed node multiple times.

The default value for METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR=ccsp. This limits deduplication to hostnames only.

The ansible_host variable, from main_host.variables, is preferred over host_name, from main_jobhostsummary, when present.

You can also set METRICS_UTILITY_DEDUPLICATOR=ccsp-experimental. This setting merges entries when both their ansible_product_serial and ansible_machine_id facts are present and duplicated.