Discover Devices

The SilverBack device discovery process can discover up to 65536 devices per discovery operation, or the number of devices contained within a Class C network. For example, you can discover an IP address range of 128.1.0.0 to 128.2.0.0 in one operation, but not 128.1.0.0 to 128.2.0.1. To discover larger numbers of devices (e.g., in a Class A network), discover subnets separately.

This topic takes you through the following steps:

Windows Monitoring Requirements
Discovering Devices
Viewing the Discovery Log

Windows Monitoring Requirements

To monitor a Windows device via Interprocess Communication (IPC), SilverBack requires that the target system:

Has the Server and Remote Registry services running
Has a network connection with File and Print Sharing enabled
Has NetBIOS over TCP/IP enabled, and the NetBIOS (TCP port 139) or Direct Host (TCP port 445) ports must be open
Has logical disks with administrative shares

For the Windows login account SilverBack also requires that:

You have provided SilverBack with a full administrative access account to this system
If a domain controller is used, the domain must also be provided in the domain field.
If Kerberos is being used for authentication, you need to include the domain name in the username field (e.g., username@domain.com). The domain field must be left blank.

Discovering Devices

From the Assets category page click on the Discover Devices link to display the Add Devices form.

The Add Devices form consists of three tabbed sub-forms:

Discovery Details - Defines addressing details such as the parent Management Domain , IP address, etc.
Credentials - Defines pre-existing authentication information that the SilverBack Managed Services Platform may need in order to access and monitor the devices.
Attributes - Defines optional default asset information such as custom name, asset type, encoding, polling method and managed status that may be required for the device to be monitored correctly.

Discovery Details

Select the parent Management Domain from the drop-down.
Choose whether you are discovering a single device or a range of devices by selecting the corresponding Discovery Type checkbox.
Enter the IP Address (or Starting and Ending IP Addresses if discovering a range of devices).

Or, if the device(s) will receive an IP address from a NAT server, select the NAT checkbox, then enter the NAT server’s IP address into the From IP Address field.

If you wish to specify a discovery timeout value, enter that value (in seconds) into the Max Timeout field.
If the device(s) are required to respond to ICMP Ping, select the Device Must be Pingable checkbox.

Credentials

In order for a vPro-enabled device to provide all Windows or SNMP AND vPro-specific statistics to SilverBack you must use two credentials that will authenticate correctly during discovery:

For a vPro-enabled Windows device - You must use both Windows and vPro Intel's vPro platform provides the ability to perform operations on devices with Intel vPro chipsets, such as software and hardware inventory management, remote network access termination, remote diagnostics and remote file access. credentials
For a vPro-enabled Linux device - You must use both SNMP and vPro credentials

Failure to provide both credentials will result in the device not providing all required statistics for reports.

Click on the Credentials tab to display the Credentials tab form.
To use previously-defined credentials, select the credentials you wish to use in the upper table, then click on the Add button.

Or, you can click on the Add All button to use all credentials.

You can also Remove or Remove All credentials by clicking on the Remove or Remove All buttons.

To rearrange the order in which the credentials are applied to the device(s), click on the Up or Down buttons.

For example, you may not wish to use SNMP Credentials to authenticate on a Windows device.

If you make a mistake and wish to start again, click on the Reset button.
If you will not be specifying any further discovery parameters, click on the Save button to begin the discovery process.

Or, click on the Cancel button to abandon the operation.

If a device is successfully authenticated against a Windows account credential , the device type is automatically changed to Server. You can change that setting if necessary.

Attributes

Remember, the information you can specify in this form is optional.

Click on the Attributes tab to display the Attributes tab form.
The fields in the tab form enable you to change the following default device information:

Custom Name

A name that you specify. The maximum size of this field is 64 characters.
Description

You can enter a description of the device, up to a maximum of 1024 characters. You can also enter HTML links here in the format "http://<target>”, “https://<target>" or "mailto:<target>". The quotation marks are mandatory for HTML links.
Interface Polling Method

To change the Device’s default polling method, select either the ICMP Ping or SNMP ( ifOperStatus ) radio button. The default polling method is ICMP Ping.

See Interface Polling Options for more information.
Asset Type Override

To override the Device’s default asset type, select the new asset type from the Asset type override drop-down. The default selection is “No Override. Use reported type.”
Syslog Message Encoding Method

If you will be managing the Device using syslog , and you want to change its syslog message encoding method, select the new method from the Encoding drop-down. You can select from UTF-8 or EUC-JP. The default encoding method is UTF-8.
Managed Status

To change the Device’s managed status, select the Manage checkbox. The default managed status is Managed.

If you make a mistake and wish to start again, click on the Reset button.
If you will not be specifying any further discovery parameters, click on the Save button to begin the discovery process.

Or, click on the Cancel button to abandon the operation.

Viewing the Discovery Log

After adding a device or a range of devices, you can validate their discovery using the Discovery Log.

SNMP Discovery Information

During discovery and rediscovery the SilverBack Managed Services Platform logs the following SNMP version supported by the discovered device to the Discovery Log. You will see messages such as:

Device <IP_address> supports SNMPv1

Device <IP_address> supports SNMPv2

If the device supports SNMPv2, then SilverBack logs whether or not the device supports the ifXTable As implemented in SNMP version 2 (SNMPv2), the ifXTable contains static information and traffic statistics for network Interfaces, including high-speed Interfaces. . You will see messages such as:

Device <IP_address> supports the ifXTable

Device <IP_address> does not support the ifXTable

A device is considered to support the ifXTable if it responds with data to an SNMPv2 query for ifXTable.ifHighSpeed.

To View the Discovery Log

From the Assets category page click on the View Discovery Log link to display the Discovery Log window.

Select the Management Domain from the drop-down.
To change the display scrolling behavior, click on the Scroll as new data becomes available checkbox.

The default behavior is to scroll as new data is added.
To stop the display of new information, click on the Stop button.
To quit the Discovery Log display and return to the Devices report, click on the Dismiss button.

If a device was not successfully added, an error message is written to the Discovery Log, for example:

07/04/03 20:07:00:787 EST: 10.151.210.52: Node doesn't respond to ICMP query.

The figure below shows the Discovery Log following a successfully completed discovery.

To confirm that devices are being added, go back to the Devices report and then click on the Refresh button.

The report refreshes, showing the newly added devices.