Discovery Process Settings

The Discovery Process Settings panel lets you select the maximum number of discovery requests that can be running at one time and the technologies to use for the discovery.

Maximum Concurrent Discoveries

A discovery task consists of one or more discovery requests. For IP-based discovery tasks, a request is created for each discovery technology and each IP address in the specified range. Therefore, if you use six technologies to discover 10 IP addresses, 60 requests are created.

Use the Maximum Concurrent Discoveries field to specify the maximum number of discovery requests that can be processed at one time. A smaller number eases the traffic load on the network but requires more time to complete the discovery task; you should use a smaller number if you are running discovery tasks during peak network load times. A larger number has the opposite effect: heavier traffic load with less time to complete the task.

Discovery Technologies

The discovery process can utilize a variety of different technologies. When more than one technology is used, the discovery process initiates a discovery request for each technology, with all technology requests running simultaneously. This is done for each target IP address. For example, if you use MAC Address, SNMP, and WMI, the discovery process creates three requests for each target IP address. The requests are queued and run according to the Maximum Concurrent Discoveries setting.

If more than one technology request returns information for a discovered device, the information is merged together. In the case of conflicting information, the discovery process chooses the “best” information. If a high priority discovery technology is successful and returns the information, then the other lower priority discovery technologies are aborted for better performance. For example, if WinAPI or WMI is successful, then MAC address and NMAP technologies are aborted.

Using fewer discovery technologies reduces the time required to complete the discovery task but might also reduce the amount of information received.

Following are brief descriptions of each technology:

MAC Address: Retrieves the MAC Address of the discovered device. Uses the ping and arp (Address Resolution Protocol) commands to map the IP addresses of the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task to their associated MAC addresses. The target devices must reside in the same network as the ZENworks Server that performs the discovery request.

NMAP: Uses NMAP (Network Mapper) to retrieve the OS type and version details of the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task. NMAP must be installed on the ZENworks Server or Windows Proxy that is processing the discovery request. NMAP is freely available from InSecure.org. For detail information on how to configure NMAP for ZENworks, see the ZENworks Discovery, Deployment, and Retirement Reference.

SNMP: Issues a request to the SNMP service on the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task. SNMP versions 2 and 1 are supported, with SNMP version 2 tried first. Retrieves the OS type and version, MAC address, Network Adapters, and CPU details of the device. Because the discovery process uses a Windows-based SNMP technology, requests generated from a ZENworks Server running on Linux must be routed to a Windows Proxy for processing. For more information, see Windows Proxy Settings.

SSH: Uses the SSH protocol to communicate with the SSH server on the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task. Depending on the device OS (Linux or NetWare), the device retrieves the OS type, OS or Kernel version, CPU, Network Adapters, and memory details.

WinAPI: Issues a request to the registry on the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task to retrieve the OS type and version, and CPU details. Because WinAPI is a Windows-specific technology, requests generated from a ZENworks Server running on Linux must be routed to a Windows Proxy for processing. For more information, see Windows Proxy Settings.

WMI: Issues a request to the WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) service on the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task. Retrieves the OS type and version, MAC address, Network Adapters, and CPU details of the device. Because WMI is a Windows-specific technology, requests generated from a ZENworks Server running on Linux must be routed to a Windows Proxy for processing. For more information, see Windows Proxy Settings.

ZENworks: Issues a request to the ZENworks Agent or ZENworks pre-agent on the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task. If the device has the ZENworks Agent, the agent responds with the OS type and version, MAC Address, Network Adapters, CPU, managed device GUID, Management Zone GUID, Management Zone name, ZENworks Agent version, disk space, and memory details. If the device has the ZENworks pre-agent, the pre-agent responds with the OS type, CPU, disk space, memory, and the GUID (global unique identifier) details that should be used to register the device in the Management Zone.

The pre-agent is only installed on OEM devices or on devices whose registration was removed from the zone.