Performing an initial discovery run

This section provides guidelines for an initial snapshot discovery without credentials. This produces a list of potential hosts that can be discovered.

Before you begin

Ensure you have the list of IP addresses in your network to scan, as well as IP addresses that should not be scanned and discovered for any reason.

To start discovery

1. Log in into BMC Discovery as the discovery user.
2. Click Manage > Discovery in the menu bar. 
   The Discovery status page is displayed.
   
   
   
   
3. Click Add New Run. 
   
   
   
   
4. In the Label field, enter a descriptive name for the discovery run.
   Where the discovery run is referred to in the UI, it is this label that is displayed.
5. In the Timing field, ensure that Snapshot is selected. 
6. In the Targeting field, select IP Address.
   You can also perform a cloud scan here by selecting the Cloud option, though you must have earlier configured cloud credentials and enabled cloud discovery.

7. In the Range field, do the following:

   1. Select the scope and appliance or Outpost to use for the scan.

      1. From the scope list, select the scope. If no scopes are defined, then you can only choose the Default scope.

      2. (scope via field) From the scanner list, select the Outpost to use. The default is Anything suitable, meaning that one from the list of available Outposts or the appliance is used.
         When you select a scope, the scanner list is repopulated with only Outposts or the local appliance that can scan the scope you selected. Similarly, when you select the local appliance or a particular Outpost, the scope list is repopulated with the scope of the local appliance or the selected Outpost.

   2. Enter the IP address information in one of the following formats:
             i. IPv4 address (for example 192.168.1.100). Labelled v4.
            ii. IPv6 address (for example 2001:500:100:1187:203:baff:fe44:91a0). Labelled v6.
           iii. IPv4 range (for example 192.168.1.100-105, 192.168.1.100/24, or 192.168.1.*). Labelled v4.
      
      

      Scanning the following address types is not supported:
      • IPv6 link local addresses (prefix fe80::/64)
      • IPv6 multicast addresses (prefix ff00::/8)
      • IPv6 network prefix (for example fda8:7554:2721:a8b3::/64)
      • IPv4 multicast addresses (224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255)

1. • As you enter text, the UI divides it into pills, discrete editable units, when you enter a space or a comma. According to the text entered, the pill is formatted to represent one of the previous types or presented as invalid.

   • Invalid pills are labeled with a question mark. You can also paste a list of IP addresses or ranges into this field. If any pills are invalid, a message stating the number of invalid pills is displayed above the range field. Clicking the link applies a filter which shows only invalid pills which you can then edit or delete. The filter can be removed by clicking clear in the Showing n of n label below the Range field. There is no paste option on the context sensitive (right click) menu.

   • Warning: You cannot paste a comma-separated list of IP address information into the Range field in Firefox. This can crash the browser. You can use a space separated list without any problems.
     • To edit a pill, click the pill body and edit the text.
     • To delete a pill, click the X icon to the right of the pill, or click to edit and delete all of the text.
     • To view the unformatted source text, click the source toggle switch. The source view is useful for copying to a text editor or spreadsheet. Click the source toggle switch again to see the formatted pill view.

   • Underneath the entry field is a filter box. Enter text in the filter box to only show matching pills.

   • Pills are not currently supported in Opera.

   8. In the Level list, select Sweep Scan for the discovery run. 
       In the sweep scan mode, the discovery process tries to determine what is at each endpoint in the scan range.
2. 9. In the Ping list, select the appropriate option—whether the target must be pinged before scanning or not. 
3. 10. In the Session Logging list, select Disabled.
        As this is your first discovery run, you can avoid creating session logs for now. In subsequent scans, you may enable this option only if you want to diagnose problems in communication      between the BMC Discovery appliance and a host or when you are raising a case with Customer Support. This option is not available for Scheduled runs and Cloud scans. Also, no option exists for recording a session log for Windows hosts. 
4. 11. (Optional) For multitenant deployments, select the company name to assign to the discovery run.
        This drop-down list is only displayed if multitenancy has been set up. If (No company) is displayed, or a company name that you were expecting is missing, refresh the list by clicking Lookup Companies on the CMDB Sync. For more information about this feature, see multitenancy. 
5. 12. Click OK.
         The Currently Processing Runs tab is displayed with the new discovery run.
   
   
   
   13. If discovery is running, the scan will start immediately.
        If the scans are stopped and you see the Discovery is Stopped message, you can enable discovery by clicking START ALL SCANS.

The screen is automatically refreshed to show the status of the discovery process. When the scan is complete, you can view the discovery scan details and results on the Recent Runs tab. 

Where to go from here

See Examining scan results.