Zone-based Discovery Overview

Zone-based discovery enables you to:

• Limit the scope of a discovery activity to a sub-set (zone) of the entire network
• Run multiple instances of the same discovery activity on different zones in the network
• Configure each discovery activity instance with different settings (parameters, scheduling)
• Diagnose discovery problems (using the Discovery Troubleshooter)

Definitions

• Management Zone. A Management Zone is a region in the network defined by a collection of IP ranges. A region of an organization’s infrastructure should be defined as a Management-Zone when you want to discover all the managed objects of the region using the same scheduling policy and parameters.

• Discovery Activity. You configure Discovery activities to perform discovery inside a specific Management Zone. The activities discover infrastructure (IPs, nodes), basic software (shallow running software including application servers, databases, and web servers), deep database configuration, and inventory ( for example, CPUs, installed software, logical volumes), among other information. A Discovery activity includes:

  • Discovery parameters that are specific to the type of the Discovery activity

  • A scheduling policy

  For more information on discovery activities and instructions on how to activate them, see the Universal CMDB Discovery and Integrations Content Guide.

Example: How to Define Management Zones

Organization-X has two data-centers: DC-A and DC-B. Each data center is owned/managed by a different administration group: Admin-Group-A and Admin-Group-B. Each administration group would like to run its own “instance” of a Discovery activity within its data center. On DC-A, you want to discover all machines operating on Windows once every week using the same discovery parameters. Therefore, DC-A should be defined as a Management Zone. On DC-B, you want to discover all the J2EE servers once every day using the same discovery parameters. DC-B should also be defined as a Management Zone.

For details on how to run zone-based discovery, see How to Run Zone-based Discovery.

For details on creating a Management Zone, see New/Edit Management Zone Dialog Box.

For details on the Discovery Troubleshooter, see Discovery Troubleshooter.

Related Information