Initiating a Discovery Scan

Before you can manage and monitor devices with WhatsUp Gold, launch the Discovery Scan wizard (DISCOVER > New Scan) and run it. The wizard guides you through steps needed to discover devices, identify device roles, and detect the services these devices provide over your network. Use the in-wizard controls to configure settings, launch scans, and save settings used for the current run. Wizard settings are saved as discovery scan settings. Discovered devices do not count against your licensing until you select them and Start Monitoring.

Important: Click the "circle i" () next to any setting in the Discovery Wizard to get tips for how the setting works and when to apply it.

What can WhatsUp Gold discover?

WhatsUp Gold Discovery can scan any network, subnet, or IP address reachable from your WhatsUp Gold installation. Scans have the ability to apply device credentials where appropriate. This feature is what differentiates it from other network scanners and enables WhatsUp Gold to gather rich and accurate device, platform, and guest OS information. In contrast, ping, ARP, and 'public' information such as SNMPv1 queries can return sparse information, no information, or in the case of "ping" requests wrong information because the request can be ignored by a firewall. Credentials also enable you to integrate monitoring solutions with cloud resources (AWS, Azure, and Meraki) and their management endpoints at discovery time. Target IP addresses are not needed for cloud resources, but including a cloud credential with your scan settings is required to discover cloud.

Simplest case: what's needed to run Discovery Wizard?

All you need to run Discovery Wizard is a starting device IP or subnet and one or more credentials that can be used to query the connected device for information. The type of information you want is related to the type of credential you provide.

Tip: If you are just starting out with WhatsUp Gold, you can just click the Review and Run tab and then click Run to discover your default gateway device. (To help you out, the Discovery Scan wizard already pre-populates the Starting Device Set page with a single IP address, which is the gateway IP address known to the WhatsUp Gold server.)

Guidelines for configuring discovery with the wizard

Discovery Wizard provides a full set of basic (Start tab and Limit and Expand subtabs) and advanced configuration options (Options tab). You can perform everything from a simple ping/ARP scan on an private network to a deep scan using domain, cloud, and virtual host credentials (and every range and scope of scan in-between). Use the guidelines in this section and the "circle i" () informational text to understand the settings that satisfy the goals of your scan.

Guideline	Details
Understand the purpose for the scan	The simplest scans (such as ping/ARP/Public SNMPv1) run very quick but only check basic connectivity for the list of target IP addresses you provide. They validate that an IP address is in use and check that typical ports are active. When it comes time for you to add monitoring, without knowing more details about the device WhatsUp Gold initially adds TCP and ping monitors. Tip: Windows Firewall and other packet filtering methods can ignore or block ping (Echo) requests. If you add appropriate credentials using the Discovery Wizard (Windows in this case) your scan can see past false negatives. Deeper Discovery scans (such as seeded scans with credential lists that might include platform, VM host, VM guest, cloud resource credentials, and more) take longer to complete because Discovery learns more as it runs and processes that information to produce more accurate and interesting results (such as target device OS, target device services that are network available, and more). When it comes time for you to add monitoring, WhatsUp Gold uses these results to start the device out with a useful list of monitors.
It is best practice to take small bites (at first)	Consider these hints: Start with a Host List, a small subnet, or a few target IP addresses before you try to scan a larger subnet or an entire network. Saved discovery scan settings are easy to modify and re-use. Save the settings from runs that work best. You can add credentials to a saved settings for a simple scan so you can re-run it later as a deep discovery scan. If you 'go big' with a scan, you can use the Limit sub tab and even the Maximum Number of Devices threshold to tune and cap a scan's reach.
Seeded scans cast a 'wide net'	For example, let's say you are starting out by using only the default gateway as a device to discover. If you run the Discovery Wizard on the IP address of the default gateway in Seeded scan, the discovered device set expands out to include all devices and conversations known to the gateway up to the Scan Depth ("hops" away from the initial target IP).

Discovery returns a view or list of candidate devices it found. You can review, filter, and select devices from this list for comprehensive management (monitoring, alerting, reporting and more) with WhatsUp Gold.

Tip: You can copy/edit/manage a scan profile in DISCOVER > Saved Scan Settings. For details, or to learn how to apply a scan based on an already created profile, see Using Saved Discovery Scan Settings.

Step 1: Choose your starting device set

Enter the identifying information WhatsUp Gold should use to attempt to discover your devices. This can include IP ranges or subnets. You also have the option to discover devices using the Gateway IP and/or local subnet. Please note, if you are attempting to discover AWS, Azure, or Cisco Meraki controlled devices, make sure to enable these options (Expand subtab) and include their credentials. Finally, this interface allows you to alternately specify a hosts file to identify scan targets as well as an option for rescanning devices already monitored by WhatsUp Gold to retrieve updated device information.

• Select Expand, then enable applicable options to expand the discovery scan to search for connected guests and hosts referenced by each virtual host server, Access Points referenced by each Wireless LAN Controller and clients, and devices referenced by each storage controller or agent. You can choose to include connected wireless clients (guests), and/or storage controllers or agents. This interface also allows you to run discovery using a seed address rather than an IP range or subnet. This option uses network data (such as peer-to-peer or IP routing tables) to expand the starting set of devices or "seeds". The expanded set is then used as new seeds to expand again, repeating up to the selected scan depth.
• Select Limit, then enable applicable options to force WhatsUp Gold to exclude previously discovered devices currently in the hidden device list and/or specific IP addresses, ranges, or subnets. This interface also allows you to specify the maximum number of devices discovery will find and/or limit the scan to private networks or monitored subnets.

Step 2: Select credentials for the scan

Enable the applicable options 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 Use all current and future credentials to use any appropriate credential in the library during the discovery scan.

Step 3: Configure additional/advanced options

Use this interface to fine tune discovery behavior by configuring the following:

• Instruct WhatsUp Gold to send an email to a specified address when discovery has completed.
• Use the SNMP SysName string for the device name for discovered devices when available.
• Use reverse DNS look-up to gather names for detected devices.
• Use advanced discovery connectivity checks.
• Limit the number of child discovery processes/jobs that run (maximum number of threads).
• Specify timeout interval for Ping, SNMP, and WMI.
• Select Schedule 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.

Last Step: Review scan settings and run discovery

1. Review the Settings, Credentials, and Schedule options. Click to the right of the applicable section to make changes, if needed.
2. Click Run to initiate the discovery scan or Save 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 Adding Discovered Devices.

See Also Discovery Getting the Most from Your Scan Handling Shared Addresses (Merge Devices) Exclude a List of IP Addresses Using Saved Discovery Scan Settings Adding Discovered Devices (to MY NETWORK)