The ZENworks discovery engine can utilize a variety of different technologies for IP-based discoveries. When more than one technology is used, the discovery engine initiates a discovery request for each technology. This is done for each target IP address. For example, if you use MAC Address, SNMP, and WMI, the discovery engine creates three requests for each target IP address. The requests are queued and the discovery engine processes five requests at a time until no requests remain. Five requests is the default. You can change the default if necessary (see Configuring Discovery Settings) or override the settings in the discovery task.
Using fewer discovery technologies reduces the time required to complete the discovery task but might also reduce the amount of information received.
NOTE:We do not support using SSH or ZENworks ping to discover Macintosh devices.
By default, the MAC Address, SSH, WinAPI, and ZENworks technologies are enabled; the SNMP, WMI, and NMAP technologies are disabled. You can change the default if necessary; see Configuring Discovery Settings.
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.
IP discovery tasks require the following information:
The range of IP addresses for the devices you want discovered.
The credentials required for the SSH, WMI, WinAPI, and SNMP discovery technologies to retrieve information from devices. The NMAP, MAC Address, and ZENworks technologies do not require credentials.
Not all technologies use the same credentials, and all devices might not have the same credentials, so you might need to specify multiple credentials to cover all targeted devices and to utilize all discovery technologies. For example, WMI and WinAPI require Windows credentials, and SNMP requires SNMP credentials.
The schedule for running the task. You can schedule it to run immediately or at a specified date and time. Optionally, you can choose to not set a schedule, in which case the task is not run until you manually initiate it or schedule a time.
The ZENworks Server that you want to run the task.
The following table provides detailed information about the IP discovery technologies:
Table 1-1 IP Discovery Technologies
IP Discovery Technology |
Functionality |
Requirements |
Prerequisites |
---|---|---|---|
WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) |
WMI is the infrastructure for management data and operations on Windows-based operating systems. Discovery issues a remote request to the WMI service on the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task to obtain information. Retrieves the OS type and version, MAC address, Network Adapters, and CPU details of the device. For more information on WMI, see the MSDN Web site. |
Because WMI is a Windows-specific technology, the requests generated from a ZENworks Server running on Linux must be routed to a Windows Proxy for processing. For more information, see Designating a Discovery and Deployment Proxy Server. |
|
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, the requests generated from a ZENworks Server running on Linux must be routed to a Windows Proxy for processing. For more information, see Designating a Discovery and Deployment Proxy Server. |
|
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 MAC Address discovery gets only the MAC address of the device and does not give any OS information. |
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NMAP |
Uses NMAP (Network Mapper) to retrieve the OS type and version details of the devices identified by the IP-based discovery task. IMPORTANT:NMAP has certain known limitations. For more information on these limitations, see the NMAP Web site. |
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ZENworks |
Issues a request to the ZENworks Agent or ZENworks preagent 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 AgentZENworks Agent version, disk space, and memory details. If the device has the ZENworks preagent installed, the preagent responds with the OS type, CPU, disk space, memory, and the GUID details that should be used to register the device in the Management Zone. |
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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. |
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 Designating a Discovery and Deployment Proxy Server. |
|
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. |
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