Asset Discovery

This article includes the following topics:

To manage your IT environment, it is crucial to understand the IT assets, their location, and how they are used. By having an accurate and complete view of the assets you own can help you adequately manage your asset. Using the Asset Discovery capability of the Serviceaide Intelligent Service Management solution you can effectively manage your dynamic enterprise environment. Asset Discovery allows you to identify network assets with an IP address. For example, devices such as servers (virtual, and physical) desktops and laptops. However the application does not support the discovery of other network devices such as routers and switches.  Discovery scans specified IP address range that tells the discovery tool which devices to scan. To retrieve useful information, the discovery tool needs credentials for devices within an IP range to connect and scan. As an administrator, you can schedule asset discovery to run at a regular interval. You set scans to start automatically at a scheduled time. Scan schedules can be set for one time in the future or on a routine basis. When the time of a scheduled scan arrives, the network discovery tool starts scanning your network.

Getting Started With Asset Discovery

This section provides a high-level overview of the asset discovery process. You can populate asset repository by discovering assets using the Native Discovery or by importing assets using a third-party tool. Assets that are discovered using the third-party discovery tools can be imported using the Other Discovered Sources option. The application supports the following asset discovery-related operations:

Native Discovery

The following steps provide a high-level overview to set up and deploy native discovery.

1. Install the Asset Discovery Manager.
2. Install the Asset Discovery Processor.
3. Configure Native Discovery.
   1. Configure the IP Range.
   2. Specify the Discovery Profiles.
   3. Configure the Credentials.
   4. Configure the Recurrence Schedule.

For more information, see Native Discovery.

Other Discovered Sources

The following steps provide a high-level overview to import assets from other discovered sources.

1. Install the Asset Discovery Manager.
2. Configure Other Discovered Sources.
   1. Specify the Database details.
   2. Specify the Credentials.
   3. Configure the Recurrence Schedule.

The application  supports the following third-party discovery tools. 

• CA Client Automation (12.5, 12.8, 12.9, and 14.0)
• Microsoft SCCM (2007 and 2012)
• LANDESK (9.0 and 9.5)
• Symantec Altiris (7.1 and 7.5)

For more information, see Other Discovered Sources.

Asset Discovery configuration Removal for Native Discovery:

New customer or an existing customer who does not have Native Discovery configured:

For all new customers by default Native Discovery under Discovery Type will not be available. To enable set the ENABLE_NATIVE_ASSET_DISCOVERY (hidden) configuration parameters to Yes which Enables the Native Discovery option, allowing full access to all download options. This will also remove displaying the asset discovery process installer file from the Asset Discovery Connectors List from the file download options. By Default this option is set to NO and a support ticket needs to be raised to enable the ENABLE_NATIVE_ASSET_DISCOVERY configuration parameters. 

Existing customer who has Native Discovery configured:

1. No Change. They should continue to configure both Native Discovery and Third Party Discovery and download both the installers

Note: We are planning to deprecate the Asset Native Discovery option by this Year end.