Initiating a Discovery Scan
Before you can manage devices with WhatsUp Gold, use the discovery scan wizard () to add devices to the WhatsUp Gold database. You can apply discovery on any network, subnet, or IP address reachable from your WhatsUp Gold installation. For additional information, see Getting the Most from Your Scan.
: To apply a scan based on an already created profile, see Using Saved Discovery Profiles.
There are two main approaches for discovery:
- . Limit scans to check for specific ranges, subnets, or provide a hosts file.
- . WhatsUp Gold "seeds" or builds an address list from target device SNMP data. It then continues to scan for additional devices based on the SNMP responses from these seed devices. This powerful feature can be described as the 'cast-a-wide-net' approach. It also has useful controls for limiting the expanse of address boundaries and network hops.
Task 1: Choose Scan Mode and Scan Rules
- Choose a mode of discovery.
- . Enter known IP range(s) or address(s). Return only these devices.
- . Include the default gateway IP address for the WhatsUp Gold server in the discovery scan.
- . Automatically include the entire subnet local to the WhatsUp Gold server in the scan.
- . Upload a host file from which devices can be resolved and added to WhatsUp Gold.
- . Include cloud-based infrastructure devices when AWS/Azure/Meraki credentials are enabled during discovery. (For quicker scans of AWS, select only the geographic regions where your instances are provisioned).
Enter an IP address, range, or subnet range to exclude from this scan.
- . Include the IP address(es) you want to begin from, harvest an address/host list from each machine, and confine the net of discovery based on exclude rules and scan depth.
- . Limit the number of hops traversed in the discovery process.
- . Include the default gateway IP address for the WhatsUp Gold server in the discovery scan.
- . Automatically include the entire subnet local to the WhatsUp Gold server in the scan.
- . Upload a host file from which devices can be resolved and added to WhatsUp Gold.
- . Include cloud-based infrastructure devices when AWS/Azure/Meraki credentials are enabled during discovery. (For quicker scans of AWS, select only the geographic regions where your instances are provisioned).
Enter an IP address, range, or subnet range to exclude from this scan.
- . Limit to devices with private IP addresses.
- . Subnets on which WhatsUp Gold currently has monitored devices.
: If you want WhatsUp Gold to disregard one or more IP addresses or ranges, enter these as an rule.
- Tune and customize.
- . Specify a set quantity for which to limit the number of devices discovered by WhatsUp Gold.
- . Expand additional controls which you can use to fine tune your discovery scan. Advanced settings allows you to expand the discovery scan and apply specific options.
- . Include vCenter and Hyper-V server hosts to ensure top-down discovery of VMs that also preserves host/guest VMs relationships as shown on the My Network Map Virtual Overlay.
- . Discover/reveal wireless access points and associated wireless clients.
- . Discover/reveal SANs.
- . Limit the number of child discovery processes/jobs that run.
- . Use hostname, DNS name, or SNMP Sysname
- ...Select specific connectivity options to use while scanning, specify ping timeout and retry settings, and enable automatic updates to devices.
- Click to advance to the Credentials tab. (If you have already configured a credentials list and have no updates you want to make to it, click .)
Task 2: Select and Add Credentials
- Click the check boxes to specify credentials WhatsUp Gold should use to access and communicate with network-connected devices during discovery.
- Use the controls at the top of the interface to add
, edit
, or prioritize
a credential for device discovery. - Enable to use any appropriate credential in the library during the discovery scan.
- Click to advance to the Schedule area of the discovery wizard.
Task 3: Schedule a Time
Schedule a time, make this a recurring scan, or just click .
- . Enable to display controls for configuring the discovery to run at a set date, time, and recurrence. You can also set an expiration date for a recurring discovery scan.
- . Direct WhatsUp Gold to send email notification when discovery scan is complete.
Click to advance to the Summary area of the discovery wizard.
Review Settings and Run
- Review the Settings, Credentials, and Schedule options. Click
to the right of the applicable section to make changes, if needed. - Click to initiate the discovery scan or to retain this scan configuration as a discovery profile in WhatsUp Gold for future use.
Finally, to enable device-level monitoring on selected devices, proceed to Promoting Discovered Devices.