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Virtual Machine Autodiscovery

Device42 discovers a range of Virtual Machine (VM) hypervisors directly from the UI, including VMware ESXi (managed via vCenter) and other virtualization platforms.

This page covers the supported platforms, job configuration options, and how to schedule VM discovery.

  • ESX and ESXi
  • Citrix XenServer
  • HyperV
  • oVirt
  • KVM/libvirt
  • Redhat
  • OpenVZ
  • AIX HMC
  • Nutanix Prism
  • Nutanix Prism Central
  • Docker
  • LXC

When configuring the job, you can have the primary Device42 appliance perform the discovery directly or designate a Remote Collector (RC) to run each task.

Set Up VM Discovery​

Navigate to Discovery > Hypervisors/*nix/Windows and add a Hypervisor, UNIX/Linux (*nix), or Windows discovery job to connect to your hosts or guests and gather physical and VM details.

VM Discovery JobVM Discovery Job
  • Job Name: A unique name to identify the discovery job.
  • Remote Collector: Optionally run the discovery job from the chosen RC instead of the Main Appliance (MA).
  • Job Debug Level: Set to Debug On to collect extra debug info useful for support tickets.
  • Platform: Choose the VM platform, such as VMware, Citrix XenServer, oVirt Server, KVM or libvirt, Docker, or LXC.
  • URL Prefix: HTTPS in most cases. Change to HTTP if you have modified the default.
  • Discovery Target(s): The FQDN or IP of the vCenter server or the ESX server. If using FQDN, set up DNS resolution in the Device42 VM console first.
note

You need to add each vCenter server you wish to discover. Device42 does not automatically find or crawl additional vCenter servers linked to your first one.

  • Port: 443 by default. Only change if you have modified it.
  • Enable Resource Utilization Tracking for Device(s): Enables periodic collection of server resource usage metrics. See Resource Utilization for more information.
  • Discovery Target(s) Credential(s): Specify a username and password with permission to view all hosts and VM inventory info. For oVirt, the username is typically in the format username@domain, for example, admin@internal.
Target CredentialsTarget Credentials
caution

Do not set up a discovery scan using critical production account credentials. Create a separate, dedicated account to use only for discovery.

Depending on the permissions granted and your configured password policies, account lockout could result in an avoidable outage.

Discovery Job Options - Hypervisor / *nix / Windows​

The following sections describe the available options for VM discovery jobs.

Naming Options​

Configure how VM and host names are handled during discovery.

Naming OptionsNaming Options
  • Strip domain suffix: Strips domain suffixes from host and VM names.
  • VM name to use: If the VM has a different name on the host than the name found from the tools, choose which name to use when adding or updating the VM in Device42. Available for VMware only.
  • Add multiple VM names as alias: If the VM name on the host and the VM name found from tools do not match, adds the second name as a device alias. Available for VMware only.
  • Track VM name change: Tracks changes to the VM name. This applies if the name is changed on an existing VM (verified by UUID). If the new name already exists in the system, it is ignored.
  • Prepend VM Host Name: Adds the VM host name to the front of the discovered guest name for each discovered VM.

Host Discovery​

Configure host-level discovery behavior and actions for VMs that are no longer found.

Host DiscoveryHost Discovery
  • Ignore Host OS Info: Do not discover host operating system information.
  • Allow hosts with duplicate serials: Creates two VM hosts (without merging) with the same serial number.
  • Ignore host serial #: Do not discover the host serial number.
  • Ignore host UUID #: Do not discover the host UUID number.
  • Action for VM not found: Choose one of the following actions for stale, deleted, or no longer discovered VMs:
Host DiscoveryHost Discovery
  • Remove Host Association: Remove the host association.
  • Change Service Level: Remove and change the service level to a new specified level, to make it easy to filter and report on these VMs.
  • Delete VM: Delete the device.
  • Do Nothing: Take no action.
  • Object Category for discovered devices: Select an object category to assign to all uncategorized devices discovered.
  • Overwrite existing object categories: If selected, existing object categories are overwritten with the selected category.

Hypervisor Options​

Configure hypervisor-specific settings for VM discovery.

Hypervisor OptionsHypervisor Options
  • Toggle service level on VM power state: If a VM is powered off, marks that VM as "Not in Service".
  • Get Guest OS Info: Retrieves the guest OS information for a VM from VMware. Not as detailed as machine-level WMI or SSH discovery.
  • Ignore Guest UUID: Do not discover the guest UUID number.
  • Discover vCloud: Discovers vCloud instances (if using vCloud connector for vSphere, vRealize, and so on) and creates custom fields for any VMware tags.

Miscellaneous Options​

Miscellaneous optionsMiscellaneous options
  • Add first discovered disk for VM: Adds the first discovered vHDD to the device properties. Off by default. This may not be accurate for your particular environment, so use this option with care.

Run or Schedule the Job​

You can schedule the discovery to run on a recurring basis on certain days of the week and at a specific time each day.

Select Add another Autodiscovery Schedule when creating or editing a job to create a run schedule.

Schedule jobSchedule job

After saving the job, click Run Now to run the job immediately. You can also run the job from the list page.

Run jobRun job

Newly created jobs will not run on the first day they are created to prevent an unintentionally large number of jobs from running initially. To run a job after its initial creation, click Run Now.

Under the Hood​

Device42 uses VMware APIs and the open-source library pyvmomi.