BMC Atrium Discovery is a Linux-based appliance. Because the methods that are used to access Windows hosts are only available from Windows systems, Windows discovery requires a Windows proxy host.
The Windows proxy scans Windows hosts on behalf of the discovery service on the BMC Atrium Discovery appliance.
Proxy changes in 8.3 SP2 and later versions
In BMC Atrium Discovery 8.3 SP2 and later versions, installation and management of proxies has been improved with the introduction of a new Windows proxy manager tool. It is also possible to install multiple proxies of each type on a single host. For information about the changes, see Windows proxy manager.
You can download the Windows proxies and Windows proxy manager as installation files from the appliance and install onto the local Windows host. For more information, see Installing Windows proxies.
Windows discovery is handled by one of the following ways:
From BMC Atrium Discovery version 8.2, the Workgroup Windows proxy is no longer supplied with the appliance. All of its functionality has been moved into the Active Directory Windows proxy.
The Windows proxy manager enables you to install and manage proxies on the Windows host on which the manager is installed. The Windows proxy manager is installed when you install a proxy. You can perform the following tasks using the Windows proxy manager:
To balance the load of the proxies, distribute discovery requests, and offer scalability and better performance solutions for Windows discovery, proxies are grouped into proxy pools based on the following criteria:
Based on the proxy version and version of the Operating System (OS) the proxy runs on, the proxy capability is one of the following:
The proxies in a pool must have identical access to Windows hosts, as only one proxy per pool is tested for access. The appliance's UI displays the pools in the order (from top to bottom) in which you have added them to the appliance. You can change their order. For discovery tasks, the proxies in a Windows proxy pool are selected depending on their loading. If a proxy is overloaded, or unavailable, the discovery task is assigned to the next available proxy in the pool.
To discover IPv6 hosts, the Operating System (OS) and proxy compatibility requirements are as follows:
The supported discovery methods are WMI and RemQuery.
Before you can use a Windows proxy to discover your Windows IT infrastructure, you must perform the following tasks in the given order:
Potential user lock out
By default, AD accounts have a limited number of login attempts, for example three attempts in fifteen minutes. Access Denied errors from WMI, DCOM, and local commands such as systeminfo are counted as unsuccessful login attempts. Where target hosts are incorrectly configured, this limit can be exceeded and the account locked out.
To avoid this, configure the Discovery account to accept unlimited login attempts.
From version 8.1 the following utilities are no longer shipped with BMC Atrium Discovery. You can download them freely and install them where required.
rcmd
: see the Microsoft Download Center and search for the resource kit for the version of Windows that you are running .pulist
: download this from the Microsoft Download Center.tlist
: download this from the Microsoft Download Center.