Discovering Your Network

SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor (NPM) provides the easy-to-use Network Sonar™ Wizard to direct you in discovering devices on your network.

Before using the Network Sonar Wizard, consider the following points about network discovery in NPM:

• Discovery does not add devices that are already in your database. Network Sonar safely recognizes and adds only new network devices.
• CPU and Memory Utilization charts are automatically enabled for your Windows®, Cisco Systems®, VMware®, and Foundry® Networks devices, as well as for some models of Alaxala®, Apresia®, H3C, F5, Juniper®, and HP® devices.
• The community strings you provide in the Network Sonar Wizard are used only for SNMP GET requests, so read-only strings are sufficient.

To begin discovering your network

1. If the Network Sonar Wizard is not already open, click Start > All Programs> SolarWinds Orion> Configuration and AutoDiscovery> Network Discovery.

Note: The first time you log in, you only need to provide Admin as your user name, leave Password empty, and click Login. This remains true until you change the admin account password.

2. Define SNMP credentials:

• If the devices on your network do not require community strings other than the default strings public and private provided by NPM, click Next.
• If any of your network devices require community strings other than public and private, or if you want to use an SNMPv3 credential, complete the following steps to add the required SNMP credential.

Note: Repeat the procedure in this step for each new community string you need to add. When you have added all your community strings, you can highlight them, and then move them up or down in the list by using the arrows to the right. To speed up discovery, move the most commonly used community strings on your network to the top of the list.

1. Click Add New Credential.

2. Select the SNMP version of your new credential.

• If you are adding an SNMPv1 or SNMPv2c credential, provide the new SNMP community string, and click Add.

• If you are adding an SNMPv3 credential, provide the following information for the new credential: a) user Name b) context c) authentication method and password/key and d) privacy/encryption method and password/key

3. Click Add > Next.

3. Specify whether you want to check nodes polled by agents for updates and click Next to continue.

• To check nodes polled by agents for updates, select the Check All Existing box.
• If you do not want to check for agent updates, make sure the box is cleared.

4. If you want to discover VMware vCenter™ or ESX® servers on your network, complete the following steps, and click Next.

1. Check Poll for VMware and then click Add vCenter or ESX Credential.
2. Choose New Credential, and provide a credential name, user name, and password.

3. Confirm the password, and click Add.
4. Click Next.

5. Check the Add to NCM box, and click Next.
6. If you want to discover WMI or RPC-enabled Windows devices,add appropriate Windows credentials, and click Next.

1. Click Add New Credential.
2. Choose New Credential, and then provide a credential name, user name, and password.
3. Confirm the password, and click Add.
4. Click Next.

7. Define the portion of your network where the devices you want to discover are located, and click Next.

8. Provide a discovery name and description, and click Next.
9. Configure a schedule for your discovery, and click Discover to start your network discovery.

• For evaluation purposes, use the default frequency setting Once, and make sure the selected option for Execute Immediately is Yes.

NOTES:

• Scheduled discovery profiles should not use IP address ranges that include nodes with dynamically assigned IP addresses (DHCP).
• Because some devices may serve as both routers and switches, the total number of Nodes Discovered may be less than the sum of reported Routers Discovered plus reported Switches Discovered.

Adding discovered devices

Whenever the results of a discovery are requested, either at the conclusion of the Network Sonar Wizard or when View Results is clicked for a selected discovery, the Network Sonar Results Wizard opens automatically. The Network Sonar Results Wizard directs you through the process of adding discovered devices, interfaces, and volumes to your database.

To select the results of a network discovery for monitoring in NPM:

After the discovery is complete, the Network Sonar Results Wizard displays.

1. On the Device Types to Import page, check the device types you want NPM to monitor, and click Next.

2. On the Select Interfaces to Import for Monitoring page, select the interfaces you want to monitor, or filter the results to specific interfaces, and click Next.

1. In the Selection Criteria area, check the appropriate status, port mode, and hardware properties of the interfaces you want to monitor.
2. To select discovered interfaces using keywords, phrases, or regular expressions, click + to expand Advanced Selection Options, select from the available advanced options, and click Reselect Interfaces.
3. In the List of Interfaces area, check the interface types you want to monitor, and click Next.

Note: By default, NPM imports interfaces that are discovered in an Operationally Up state. However, because interfaces may cycle off and on intermittently, you can also select Operationally Down or Administratively Shutdown states for import.

3. On the Volume Types to Import page, check the volume types you want NPM to monitor, and click Next.
4. If there are any devices on the Import Preview that you never want to import,check the device to ignore, and click Ignore. Selected nodes are added to the Discovery Ignore List.
5. Confirm that all the devices, interfaces, and volumes that you want to import are checked in the Import Preview list, and click Import.
6. After the import completes, click >Finish. Imported devices display in the All Nodes resource.