Network Device Discovery

End your network device discovery woes with Discovery Profile

Discovery Profile in OpManager is the one-stop solution for all your network device discovery needs. It allows you to discover an individual or a set of devices with only their name or IP address. You can add a variety of devices, like VMware, Hyper-V, UCS, and Xen servers as well as other storage devices like RAID drives, tape libraries, and Fibre Channel switches. OpManager's network device discovery maps devices, renders the logical network topology diagram (Layer2 map) of the devices, and their seed router, and also allows bulk discovery of devices via an IP range, CSV file, subnet, or through Active Directory (AD) discovery.

The new update in OpManager's device discovery also allows you to approve or ignore devices once they are discovered. Approved devices will be monitored, while ignored devices will be restricted even during rediscovery or scheduled discovery.

Interface Discovery: Effectively discover the interfaces associated with your network devices

The Interface Discovery feature in OpManager helps you quickly discover and monitor your network interfaces. Interfaces are automatically classified based on predefined interface templates bundled with the product. Currently, OpManager has around 300 interface templates (or interface types) that help successfully classify interface types and categories. Similar to device discovery, interfaces can be discovered in bulk by specifying a condition or rule. Bulk discovery of interfaces can be performed while adding the associated devices to OpManager (if the device is discovered via Add Device) or post-discovery. You can also:

• Individually discover interfaces associated with network devices and monitor them effectively.
• Generate reports and configure notifications for individual or a set of interfaces and analyze the performance if necessary.
• Generate violation alerts with the help of predefined interface thresholds. By default, alerts will be raised when the interface is down or when the thresholds have been violated. You can also customize these thresholds according to your environment.
• Continuously monitor the key metrics such as bandwidth, utilization, and errors/discard rate and troubleshoot the issues with your network interfaces.
• Schedule interface rediscovery at regular intervals.

How Discovery Schedule simplifies network device discovery

• Automated network device discovery: Create the schedule once and it will run automatically in the time interval specified. This comes in handy if devices are regularly added to your network.
• Configure rediscovery rules: Configure the actions to be carried out when rediscovering a device. For example, while rediscovering a specific range, new devices may have been added to the network or existing devices may have been removed. You can configure OpManager to add, ignore, or delete those devices when found.

Use reports to gain deep insights after each network device discovery operation

OpManager's network device discovery tool is equipped with a powerful reporting feature that simplifies the tracking and analysis of your network and the corresponding device performance.

• Specify an email address and OpManager will send a detailed report to that email after every discovery process. This report can also be viewed and downloaded from the product if necessary. Customize the format of the email for easy interpretation by including your custom subject line and message.
• The report includes the total number of devices found in the specified range, the number of devices successfully discovered, the number of undiscovered devices, the status of all discovery schedules, and other important information that will help you drill down into the efficiency of the network device discovery process.
• Create manual inventory reports from the Reports tab post-discovery.

Automatically associate monitors with the pre-made configurations, device templates

• OpManager's network device discovery comes with over 11,000 device templates. A device template is a set of predefined properties (such as sysOID, device type, vendor, a few preconfigured performance monitors, and thresholds) that helps you monitor the various metrics associated with a device.
• On successful device discovery, OpManager's network discovery tool compares the device with the available device templates and associates one of them with the discovered device.
• The device template also contains certain basic monitors, predefined threshold values for different parameters, and more. When a device is associated with a device template, the configurations required for monitoring, such as threshold values and monitors, are added to the device. You can allow OpManager to monitor the device with these settings, or you can edit these settings in the device template or via the device snapshot page.
• You can create custom device templates or import a device template into OpManager using the Sync and Rediscover option.

Set discovery rules to automate post network device discovery activities

• OpManager's network discovery tool comes equipped with a Discovery Rule Engine, which helps in further leveraging the power of automation in the device discovery process.
• The Discovery Rule Engine automatically associates monitors and business views with a device during discovery if the discovered device satisfies a set of predefined conditions. This eliminates the need to manually associate the basic monitors with a device after discovery, saving time and effort.
• Associate process monitors, service monitors, file or folder monitors, and URL monitors with devices.
• Create your custom monitors and add them to devices during the device discovery process.
• The power of the Discovery Rule Engine is not limited to merely assigning monitors based on certain conditions during discovery. It can also be used to associate a device with a business view (based on the business area) and a notification profile.