Multiple Devices Merging into one within N-able N-central

Last Modified

Thu Nov 01 16:27 GMT 2018

Description

• This most commonly occurs when using the Customer-specific Agent for a device and allowing N-able N-central to determine whether the device exists within N-able N-central , or whether it's a new device. While N-able N-central , for the most part, is relatively intelligent in determining whether a device exists already or not and dealing with it occasionally, It's not perfect and can occasionally map together devices into one.
• This is especially prevalent when devices share similar hardware profiles, and particularly when they have identical MACs (such is the case with virtual NIC adapters installed with some VPN software). The best means to mitigate this in the future is to navigate to the SO or Customer level and navigate to Administration > Defaults > Discovery Defaults > MAC Addresses to Exclude. From here, you can specify the MAC addresses of the virtual adapters which you'd like N-able N-central to ignore when comparing devices during the discovery phase.

Environment

• N-able N-central

Solution

At this point, if you'd like to remedy the merged devices, you'll need to remove the devices from N-able N-central as well as their agents. Once removed, you'll need to follow this procedure to install the agents using the activation keys:

1) At the customer level, under Actions, select Add/Import Devices
2) Select Add Device under Manually Create a Device that Represents an External Website or IP Address
3) Fill in the vitals for the device toward the top of the page
4) Ensure that the Local Agent checkbox has a check
5) Click Finish
6) Find the new device under your customer
7) Under the Settings > Local Agent tab, note the Activation Key.
8) Click the Agent Installer link to download WindowsAgentSetup.exe
9) Copy and paste the Activation Key when prompted
10) Complete installation, the agent should now talk to N-able N-central server