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SCCM Discovery (.NET Tool)

note

THIS TOOL WILL BE DEPRECATED in the near future. With v18.11.00 of Device42 and functionality of SCCM integration will be available natively from Device42, or using the WDS service. You can continue to use the tool for now, but we recommend that you cut over to the native functionality.

Please see our new SCCM documentation.

The Auto Discovery Client is an external tool [.NET based] that runs on Windows machines, either standalone or as a service. It auto-discovers detailed information about Windows Servers, Linux / UNIX / *nix Servers, Hyper-V Hypervisor, and Virtual Machine Guest inventories, and can also import CI data [API –> API] from Microsoft SCCM Instances.

 


SCCM Information

If you are already using SCCM in your environment or are planning to use it, the Device42 SCCM integration can automatically sync the hardware and software inventory (CI) data to Device42.

SCCM Permissions

The user account you supply must have permission to access the SCCM instance. You can add a user in SCCM under “Administration”; Choose “Administrative Users”. The user we tested within the lab was an SCCM Admin, but the “Read-only Analyst” role should be plenty, as it “Grants Permissions to view all Configuration Manager Objects”, and the import is a read-only operation from the SCCM perspective.

 


.NET Tool Installation

You must contact the Device42 Support team (support@device42.com) to get access to the Discovery Client software.

Installation requirements and instructions for setting up auto discovery client.

  1. Install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. There is a Standalone Installer available at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17718
  2. To install the Autodiscovery client, please contact the Device42 Support team (support@device42.com).

After running the installation, you can find the application in your Start Menu.

Silent Installation

The silent install will fail if, for whatever reason, it is unable to successfully stop the service in a short time period. If a discovery is running, the service will not stop until the discovery can be gracefully terminated (which could take a bit of time). The solution is to stop the service, and then wait; if the process is still running, kill it and then proceed with the installation.

The key here is to ensure the process is not running when you attempt to run the silent installation.

 


Settings

Under the Settings tab, you will have sections for System, Credentials, and Exclusions.

System Sub-Menu - Device42 System Settings

Device42 Settings:

You can enter your Device42 credentials here to allow the application to upload the auto-discovered data directly to Device42.

Device42 Config

System Settings:

The Task Threads value allows you to limit the amount of task threads the application will spawn during autodiscovery. You can use this to reduce the strain on your network if you are concerned about scanning a higher amount of systems.

Ignore Settings:

You can choose to ignore common services, software, and software patterns to avoid pulling in services or software that are typically not tracked by users. The lists used are available at https://github.com/device42/AutoDiscoverIgnoreFiles

Credentials Sub-Menu

By choosing “New” from the dropdown you will be able to define all the credentials to be used in the autodiscovery process. For Windows credentials you can enter a local or domain user who has privileges to execute Remote WMI calls. You can also opt to use the current credentials of the logged in user.

Device42 Credentials

You can enter a test address to verify that a server is accessible from the autodiscovery application.

Exclusions Sub-Menu

Device42 Exclusions

Ports

You can use the Exclusions section to list listening or remote ports that you would like excluded from autodiscovery. For instance, adding port 22 to the excluded Unix ports will exclude adding the service port for ssh if you are not interested in seeing ssh connections in Device42.

Remote Connections

You can exclude remote connections by IP address and port as well. This is convenient if there are known connections to any of your devices that you are not interested in bringing in to Device42.


Discovery

The Discovery section will allow you to setup and save multiple autodiscovery jobs.

Device42 AutoDiscovery

Discovery Settings

By choosing “New” from the dropdown for Settings you will be able to setup a new autodiscover job. The settings for the fields are as follows:

FieldDescription
SettingsSelect Pre-Configured Jobs from this dropdown
NameYour chosen name for the autodiscovery job
CredentialsChoose one credentials for the discovery that were setup in the Settings tab
Device NameChoose from one of the options to set the device name. See below for details
IgnoreYou can choose to ignore OS name, UUID, Serial Number, Domain Suffix, IPv6 address, and/or Virtual Subtype
OptionsYou can choose to give the host name precedence, Discover Services, and if you have the add-ons, discover software and/or application inventory
Device CategoryChoose from Device Categories you’ve configured within Device42. Selecting ‘Override’ will replace existing categories with the current selection.
Service LevelThese values are pulled from Device42 and allow you to set the Service Level on the discovered devices.
CustomerThese values are pulled from Device42 and allow you to associate discovered servers with the selected Customer.
VRF GroupThese values are pulled from Device42 and allow you to assign the discovered servers to the selected VRF Group.
Discover byHere you can choose CIDR Blocks, Host Names, IP Ranges, or Domain Servers to perform the autodiscovery against
CriteriaWhen Using Host Name or CIDR Blocks to auto-discover, you can enter the host names or CIDR blocks in comma-separated list form
IP RangeWhen using IP address autodiscovery, you can enter a single IP address or an address range in this section
ExclusionsIf you would like to ignore IPs in a range, you can enter them here

For Windows Autodiscovery by Domain Server, if you would like you can use a custom filter by entering an LDAP query to filter the results, excluding discovery of certain non-matching devices.

For example:

(&(objectCategory=computer)(dNSHostName=d42sus.pvt))

…will search the domain server for all computers with dns hostname - d42sus.pvt and autodiscover the matches.

Run Status

This is where you will see information about the last run status of the autodiscovery job.


Device Naming Options

The Device42 autodiscovery tool can add or update the Device Name of any targets with the hostname format of your choosing. Device42 can combine the discovered Hostname with the Domain Name [Option: ‘Hostname plus Domain Name’]. You can also add the name as discovered (hostname) as an alias, rather than replacing an existing device’s name by choosing the option ‘Hostname and add Hostname plus Domain Name as Alias’. This option adds devices with the hostname as discovered as the device name, and the FQDN as the alias. Full details are below.

From the Discovery tab, set your desired options, and choose the desired “Device Name” option from the dropdown.

Device Naming Options

  • Hostname as discovered
  • Hostname plus domain name as discovered. If the domain name already exists in the hostname, it will not be added again. You may need to set “Ignore Domain Name” for the best functionality.
  • Hostname and add Hostname plus Domain name as alias. This is the default and recommended setting.
  • Hostname plus Domain name and add Hostname as alias.

In order to set the Device Name to the FQDN of the device, make sure you select an option that includes “Hostname plus Domain Name”.l


Information

Recent Messages

In the Information section, you have the ability to see Recent Messages which will allow you to follow the progress of your autodiscovery jobs.

Search Logs

The Search Logs section will allow you to enter search criteria to check the log files if you have problems with any of the autodiscovery jobs.

Diagnostic Settings

Diagnostic Settings

If you have trouble with autodiscovery using the application, we now have a section that will allow you to generate a log bundle to send to the Device42 team for diagnosis. This section allows you to set the location of the logs, select which logs to keep, and generate a bundle.

Summary

The Summary section displays a summary list of results of recent discovery attempts against a list of discovered IPs, including a date and timestamp. Looking at the summary is a quick way to determine if discovery against a specific IP succeeded or failed, and if failed, if the failure was possibly due to the instance residing on the IP being unreachable [‘TCP Ping’], or maybe because of authentication errors [‘Authenticated’]. A value of ‘True’ in the ‘Sent to D42’ column means that CI data in the Device42 CMDB was updated for that particular line’s instance.


Tasks (Task Schedules)

Tasks

In the tasks section, you can set as many different autodiscovery schedules as needed to cover your environment in the Schedules section. You can choose which days of the week, and whether you want to run the job at a specific time, or every X hours, as well as which discoveries to run.

In the Status section, you will see the last status of each of your autodiscovery jobs.

 

General Considerations

Here are some limitations and considerations:

  • If you have populated Device42 [CSV imports, spreadsheets, manual entry, etc.] with devices before your first run of this tool, please make sure to run this on a few devices first to make sure the naming convention used by you and the one discovered by the tool are compatible. (For example: you added nh-linux01 as a device. Then, autodiscovery finds the hostname nh-linux01.example.com and adds it as a new device because the names don’t match. To fix this, you can check the checkbox above to use only hostname)
  • It is best to use the auto-discovery client after you have run network autodiscovery and/or defined the subnets your network IPs reside on.
  • Floating IPs that belong to a cluster logically but are found on a device during autodiscovery will be assigned to that device, and not the cluster resource.
  • You can run the .NET Discovery tool from any (and multiple) network segments. Communication from the autodiscovery client back to the main Device42 instance requires access via port TCP/443 (HTTPS) to be allowed on your network.
  • Please be sure to use an Administrator account. If you use the “Local System account”, discovery will not work correctly for other machines in the network.