How discovery works
The initial process to discover devices in your network is the same across all licenses. To initially discover devices, you do not need to install an agent on all your network devices.
Base license provides agentless discovery solution that discovers operating system, hardware configurations, and software inventories in your IT environment. You can manage discovered devices by upgrading your Base discovery license, installing agents on discovered devices, and performing direct actions (such as, remote control or view registry) and operational rules on them.
The following topics are provided:
The following video (2:53) provides an overview to Remedyforce Discovery.
Discovery components
discovery requires the following components:
Component | Description |
|---|---|
Remedyforce Discovery Server | This server enables communication among scanners, Remedyforce, and discovered devices. After discovery, the operating system, hardware configuration, and software inventory details of discovered devices are stored on the server. |
Scanners | A scanner is a Windows or Linux device in your network on which an agent is running. A scanner executes scans on individual devices or groups of devices, called target list on which agent might not be running. It accesses the devices via different protocols to retrieve various device information. |
How devices are discovered
The following figure shows how the discovery components work together to discover devices in your network:
How a scanner discovers a device
To scan a device, scanner performs the following actions:
- Splits the target list members into smaller units.
Uses the Network Mapper (Nmap) (depending on the scan configuration) to perform the following actions:
- Discover host
- Scan port
Detect service and OS
For information about ports used by a scanner, see Port Overview
After detecting the open ports (or the filtered ports) that are running services and the underlying protocols, the supplied credentials for each protocol are tested. In this way, the scanner detects the OS and performs the following scans:
Scan to
Protocol used
Verify test credentials
SMB, WMI, SSH, SNMP
Detect WMI user name
WMI, SMB
Detect Mac address
WMI, SNMP, SSH
Detect device type
WMI
Detect virtual devices
VMware vSphere, Hyper-V
- After the credentials are tested for each known open port, more information about OS is fetched by using the SSH, WMI, SMB, or SNMP protocol.
- After the device is detected, software inventory is obtained by using the SSH (Linux, UNIX) or SMB or WMI (Windows) protocol and hardware inventory is obtained by using the SSH or WMI protocol.
- After fetching software and hardware details, the scanner writes the scan log and device inventory details to the Remedyforce Discovery Server by using the SNMP protocol.
To know the status of a scan and its meaning, see the Status/Description table under the To assign a schedule to a scan section in Managing asset discovery scans
Related topics
Supported-discovery-licenses-and-features