Provisioning network changes in Network Manager

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You have successfully modeled your network with Network Manager and have set up regular discoveries to ensure the topology in the database evolves with the inevitable additions, removals, re-IPs that occur in the network.  The discovery makes various assumptions about what to do with these differences, and knowing about them, and how to change them, will give you better control. 

This article explains these concepts and help you decide whether you will let obsolete devices be removed automatically (convenient) or want more control for yourself. 

The IP address and hostname play a significant part of determining identity within Network Manager.  The discovery will do its best to adjust the topology as it finds duplicate IP addresses and hostnames.  This explains what you can do to facilitate this and thus ensure the devices continue to be monitored correctly.

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