Configure discovery settings

Before you can run a discovery scan on your network, you need to configure the discovery settings. These settings are all located in the Settings column of the Discovery Console.

Select scan settings

WhatsUp Gold can use several different methods to scan your network. Select the scan type that best suits your network.

SNMP Smart Scan. WhatsUp Gold discovers devices by reading SNMP information on your network. This scan type uses one or more SNMP-enabled devices to identify the devices and sub-networks on your network. For more information, see Using SNMP Smart Scan.
IP Range Scan. Using this option, WhatsUp Gold scans a range of IP addresses. For more information, see Using IP Range Scan.
Hosts File Scan. WhatsUp Gold imports devices from a hosts file. For more information, see Using Hosts File Scan.
VMware Scan. WhatsUp Gold connects to VMware servers and uses the VMware vSphere API to gather infrastructure information about your virtual environment. The VMware Scan uses a list of user provided VMware vCenter servers or VMware hosts as targets for the scan. For more information, see Using VMware Scan.

Select SNMP,Windows and VMware credentials

To correctly identify devices, WhatsUp Gold needs to query the devices using SNMP, WMI, the VMware API or all of these methods. In these sections, select the credentials that you want WhatsUp Gold to use during discovery. You can select multiple credentials. The credentials list contains the credentials currently configured in the Credential Library. To use a credential that is not listed, you must first add the credential to the Credential Library in WhatsUp Gold. For more information, see Using Credentials.

Note: Selecting too many credentials may significantly increase the time required to run discovery. To decrease the amount of time it takes for discovery to run, select only the credentials that are used by the devices you want to discover.

Configure scan method

WhatsUp Gold can use two methods to detect that a device exists on an IP address:

Ping. When using this method, WhatsUp Gold detects devices by issuing a ping request via ICMP and listening for a response.
Advanced. When using this method, WhatsUp Gold first detects all devices that respond to ping. Then, if a device does not respond to ping, WhatsUp Gold scans common TCP ports for a response. For a complete list of TCP ports that WhatsUp Gold scans using this method, see Preparing devices for discovery.

Configure advanced settings

You can modify the timeout and retry settings for SNMP and WMI requests. By default, WhatsUp Gold has a 2 second timeout for SNMP requests, 10 seconds for WMI requests, and retries failed SNMP requests once.

If the Use SNMP SysName to name devices option is selected, WhatsUp Gold attempts to identify the SNMP SysName as the first measure to define the device name. If SNMP is not enabled on a device, WhatsUp Gold attempts to resolve the DNS host name of discovered devices if the Resolve host names option is selected. If neither the SNMP SysName nor the DNS host name is available, WhatsUp Gold uses the device IP address to name the device. Clear Resolve host names and Use SNMP SysName to name devices if you do not want WhatsUp Gold to resolve the device name with either of these discovery methods.

By default, WhatsUp Gold automatically scans for virtual machines hosted by discovered VMware servers. If you do not want WhatsUp Gold to scan for the virtual machines hosted by discovered VMware servers, clear Automatically scan virtual machine devices after scanning the VMware server hosting them.