Introducing asset discovery

Devices that are connected to the network but on which no CM agent is installed can be remotely inventoried by any CM agent , which collects the software and hardware inventory of these devices.

Unmanaged devices in CM are devices of your infrastructure that

  • are never connected to the network or
  • do not have a CM agent installed.

Nevertheless, CM provides possibilities to inventory (hardware and software) these devices and include the generated inventories in the BCM database . The custom inventory for unmanaged devices can only be created directly in the CM console .

The Asset Discovery functionality of CM allows you to scan your network or parts of your network for all existing assets. It finds all types of assets, PCs, printers, routers, and so on, with and without CM agent installed. The discovery also scans the devices for their basic information such as operating system and inventories and displays these in the console window.

Components

Asset Discovery in CM is done via a number of different components and objects listed in the following, and on which you can see detailed information in the following sections and topics:

  • Asset discovery scanner
     The Asset Discovery Scanner is any device in your network, defined as the scanner. It is responsible for the whole scanning process. By default the master is predefined as the scanner, but any other device with a reasonably strong configuration fitting the previously mentioned requirements can take over this role.
  • Discovered device inventory
     The discovered device inventory for a device or a group is an extraction of the inventories available and generated by the CM agent , that is, it generates the discovered hardware, software and parts of the security inventory for all discovered assets as well as the connectivity inventory, that is, the actual physical connections between the devices.
  • Asset discovery wizards
     CM also has a wizard that guides you through the different options of scanning your network devices and launching the scans.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites must be fulfilled for asset discovery to be operable:

  • The operating system of the scanner device must be Windows XP, Windows 2003, Workstation and Server for all versions, Windows Vista Business and Ultimate, 64-bit Windows, Windows 2008, Windows 2008 R2 64 bit, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 2012 R2 64-bit or Linux AS/ES 3 and 4, CentOS and SUSE.
  • The master/scanner should have a permanent Internet connection, preferably via Ethernet, it must not use a wireless connection.
  • IPv6 addresses are supported by the asset discovery, however, be aware that specifying complete IPv6 subnets can take a very long time. It is recommended not to do so.

 

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