Efficient component look-up in Zenoss

… or how to find an interface object from d.os.interfaces() or d.hw.fans() without a loop.

The problem: in Zenoss transforms, I often need to do a check on an attribute of a component, e.g. re.search(‘stuff’, interface.description). The problem is, the event component does not contain the “interface” object. Instead, it contains the interface.getInterfaceName() string. The usual way to find the object until now was:

for iface in device.os.interfaces():
    if iface.getInterfaceName() == evt.component:
        # found
        if re.search('stuff', iface.description):
            # do something
        break

For devices with huge number of interfaces (Cisco 4500 or Cisco Nexus), this took often 40-100 ms, which is a lot inside an event transform. Just imagine a small flood of events…

The solution: found in a transformation by Lionel Seydoux:

iface = d.os.interfaces._getOb(evt.component)
if re.search('stuff', iface.description):
    # do something

Works as well for other elements, e.g. a fan:

d.hw.fans._getOb('Switch_1, Fan_1')

Now I’m not sure what _getOb() really does. Maybe it loops as well. But still, the code is much nicer without these unrolled loops.