Component Administration - Discover
 

MANAGER DISCOVERY – GENERAL SETTINGS

eG Enterprise is capable of automatically discovering the components in the target environment. To perform this discovery, administrators can use either the central eG manager or the eG agents installed on the target hosts. Both these discovery methodologies are briefly discussed below:

  • Discovery using the eG manager: If the eG manager is used to discover the targets for monitoring, then such a discovery will typically be based on the port number(s) on which the components are listening. In case of network devices or components that do not listen on any port, the eG manager uses SNMP for discovery. When discovery is triggered, the eG manager uses a unique port scanning technique/SNMP (as the case may be) to discover all the components/network devices that are in configured IP ranges, regardless of whether agents are installed on them or not. Typically, an agent is installed on a host only if the performance of one/more applications executing on that host interests the administrator.

    Since the eG manager discovers components unmindful of whether agents are monitoring them or not, this discovery process might end up discovering a wide variety of applications that the administrator might not even be interested in monitoring! Secondly, manager discovery is based on the assumption that the eG manager has access to all the components in the target environment. In the real world however, this might not be the case. The manager could be behind a firewall, and might hence be denied access to many/all components in the target environment; in this case therefore, with manager-based discovery, a number of components could go undiscovered.

  • Discovery using the eG agents:

    As stated earlier, typically, an agent is installed on a host only when an administrator is interested in monitoring one/more applications executing on that host. In large IT environments with thousands of components, it is often difficult for administrators to manually track where agents are installed, and manage only the corresponding hosts and applications. In such environments therefore, administrators might prefer to run a discovery procedure that automatically discovers only those components that they are “interested in monitoring” - i.e., an auto-discovery procedure that can discover only those applications which are executing on the hosts where agents are installed; this ensures that the eG administrative interface is not crowded with a wide variety of applications that an administrator might not even be interested in monitoring. This can be achieved only if discovery is performed using the eG agents.

    The agents use many intelligent techniques to discover the applications that may require monitoring. Typically, the agent employs a simple port scanning technique to discover the applications executing on its host. In addition, the agent is also capable of logging into (using configured login credentials) an application so discovered to gather information related to the remote applications it interacts with frequently, so that such remote applications are discovered as well. This way, the agent automatically discovers applications running on even those hosts that do not have an agent installed on them! Command-based discovery of applications is also supported, which is useful while discovering non-port-based applications. However, note that agents cannot automatically discover network devices operating in an environment.

    Since every agent performs the discovery and communicates the results to the eG manager, the location of the eG manager will not in any way impact the discovery process - i.e., even if the eG manager is behind a firewall and is not able to access the components in the target environment, the eG agent will be able to promptly detect the additions/removals in the environment everytime it rediscovers, and will be able to update the eG manager with this knowledge.

    Besides individual components, the agent can also be used to automatically discover the component topology - i.e., the physical/logical inter-relationships that exist between discovered components. This ability, when enabled, helps administrators draw an almost accurate segment topology with minimal user intervention and time! Also, since the auto-discovered topology depicts the ‘real’ dependencies that prevail in a ‘real’ environment, it consequently enhances the eG Enterprise system's innate ability to auto-correlate performance and proactively detect performance issues.

To configure the GENERAL SETTINGS for the discovery process using the eG manager, do the following:

  • To start the discovery process, you must specify the IP address range(s) that characterize the target environment in the GENERAL SETTINGS page. You can provide the IP range for discovery in one of the following ways:

    • You can manually specify the IP range for discovery;

    • You can instruct the eG manager to automatically discover the IP range from the target environment;

    • If your eG manager integrates with an Active Directory server, then, you can discover the range of IP addresses available in a particular subnet of a chosen domain;

    To manually specify the IP range, do the following:

    • Set the Discover infrastructure components using Active Directory flag to No.

    • Provide an IP address manually in the IP range text area. While many environments have a single IP address range, some environments may involve components at different locations, with each location using a different IP address range. To support these different types of environments, the eG administrative interface permits the administrator to enter one or more IP address ranges that characterize the target environment. While discovering multiple IP address ranges in the target environment, ensure that you press the Enter key on your keyboard after every IP range. This way, every IP range will occupy one row of the IP range text area.

      Note

      Both IPv4 and IPv6 ranges are supported. However, a single IP range can include either IPv4 addresses or IPv6 addresses only, and not a combination of both.

    To make sure that the eG manager auto-discovers the IP range available in the target environment, do the following:

    • Set the Discover infrastructure components using Active Directory flag to No.

    • Click the Fetch IP range for this environment icon next to the IP range text area.

    • This will automatically populate the IP range text area with the range of IP addresses available in the target environment.

    If you want to fetch the IP range from the AD server with which the eG manager integrates, do the following:

    • Set the Discover infrastructure components using Active Directory flag to Yes.

    • Pick a domain from the Active Directory Domain list.

    • The sites in the chosen domain will then be available for selection. Select an Active Directory Site from the list.

    • Next, pick one/more subnets from the Select SubNet(s) From Site list.

    • This will automatically populate the IP range text area with the range of IP addresses in the chosen subnets.

  • The administrator has to choose the type of network being discovered through the Type of Network list box. The default choice is a Local Area Network (LAN), wherein network delays are of the order of a few tens of milliseconds. To support networks that span multiple geographic locations, an administrator can change the network type to a Wide Area Network (WAN) in which case, the network delays are of the order of seconds.

  • By default, the eG manager attempts to use the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to figure out which hosts are available in the target environment. Once the hosts that are available are detected, the manager uses a simple port scanning technique to discover the components running on these hosts. For security reasons, some environments may not allow ICMP traffic through their networks. An administrator can inform the eG manager of such a restriction by using the ICMP enabled option. If this value is set to “No”, the eG manager directly uses the port scanning technique for each of the hosts in the specified IP address ranges.

  • The Re-discovery period determines the frequency with which the discovery process executes. This frequency governs how quickly the eG manager is able to discover components that may have been newly added to the target environment. The default is 1 hour.

  • By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic - for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components - to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG manager to conduct the discovery-related data traffic over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set the Data over TCP flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

  • Indicate how network devices are to be discovered by the eG manager. Typically, SNMP is used to discover network devices. The version of SNMP used by network devices in the target environment should first be selected from the SNMP version list. Then, specify the SNMP community strings using which the network device discovery is to be performed should then be provided as a comma-separated list. This specification can be cleared at any point in time by clicking the Clear the community string icon (i.e., the ‘eraser’ icon) next to the SNMP community strings text box.

  • By default, components discovered by the eG manager are not automatically monitored by eG Enterprise; you have to explicitly manage the discovered components for eG to begin monitoring them. This is why, the Auto-manage discovered components flag is set to No by default. If you want eG to automatically manage the discovered components, then set this flag to Yes. Selecting Yes automatically invokes the Include/Exclude Host IP/Name field, where you can indicate which components you want auto-managed upon discovery, and which ones need not be. To auto-manage only specific components, select Include from the drop-down list, and specify a comma-separated list of IP addresses/host names that you want auto-managed - eg., egora,sqlserver,xenapp. IP/host name patterns can also be provided using wildcard characters - for eg., 192.168.10.*,192.168.*.121,*.168.9.*. In these cases, only the configured components or those that match the configured patterns will be auto-managed upon discovery; all other discovered components will have to be manually managed.

    Likewise, to auto-manage all discovered components, except a few specific components, select the Exclude option from the drop-down, and provide a comma-separated list of IP/host names that need not be auto-managed. Here again, IP/host name patterns can also be provided.

  • By default, components that are deleted will not be discovered again. Accordingly, the Re-discover deleted components flag is set to No by default. If you want the eG Enterprise system to re-discover deleted components, then set this flag to Yes.

  • Click the Update button to register the changes.

  • Once the settings are updated, the discovery process will start and control will automatically switch to the Start sub-node under the Actions node. This indicates that discovery has begun. You can track the progress of the discovery and can also identify the types of components that have been discovered using the COMPONENTS - MANAGE/UNMANAGE page that appears in the right panel when the Start node is selected.

    The Component type list in the COMPONENTS - MANAGE/UNMANAGE page lists the types of applications/devices that the discovery process has discovered.

  • You can stop the discovery process any time after it is started by clicking the Stop sub-node under the Actions node.