Device Autodiscovery
NetIM uses SNMP to discover devices in your network and then configures device entries for SNMP, CLI, or WMI access. When NetIM scheduled collection is run, as specified in the Basic Setup wizard, incremental discovery is performed. When you manually discover devices using the Add/Discover Devices wizard (see
Add/Discover Devices wizard), a greenfield discovery is performed.
Device discovery finds network devices and adds corresponding device entries in the Device Manager. It does not collect or import device data into the NetIM database.
Device discovery is most useful if you have SNMP access to network devices and permission to access those devices using SNMP. If you do not have SNMP access to devices but can access them using CLI from the NetIM, Device Discovery cannot create device entries but can still configure device entries for CLI access.
During autodiscovery, IP routing tables are collected using SNMP. During the collection of these tables, NetIM inserts a delay between data requests to try to avoid placing too heavy a load on the device CPU during autodiscovery. Contact Support for assistance if autodiscovery is having a significant negative impact on CPU usage for devices in your network.
Device autodiscovery adds traffic to the network and places a load on network devices during the discovery process. Use care when determining when you should schedule collection to avoid impacting network performance. Coordinate with network administrators to ensure that the collection is not interpreted as a security threat/intrusion.
The global configuration settings for device discovery are managed using the Global Discovery Settings wizard. See
Managing Global Credentials and Other Global Discovery Settings.
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