Create a discovery job

 

The discovery job locates new devices on a customer environment using a Windows probe. Once added to N-able N-central you can monitor the device for any issues, and perform security, patching and other maintenance to ensure compliance across the customer's network.

Discovery Tagging

The Discovery Tagging option on the Advanced tab sets a flag on the device that informs a probe that the device it has been discovered. If you move the device to a another customer or site, a probe that discovers the device in the new location will see that it is still managed by another customer or site. The device will appear in N-able N-central as a duplicate device and not count towards the number of unmanaged devices at that location. Deselecting this option causes N-able N-central to discover a moved device as a new device again by the new probe.

  1. Click Configuration > Asset Discovery > Discovery Jobs.
  2. Click Add and enter a Name and a Description.
  3. On the Devices to Discover tab, select the customer and/or site and IP addresses to scan.

    4. When you enter an IP address, the discovery job will scan the entire subnet, not just the single address. To specify one single IP address, use the format 192.168.100.56-56.

  4. For macOS devices, click Add New Account to configure security credentials to use to establish SSH sessions with macOS devices.

    Providing macOS credentials enables the discovery job to establish an SSH connection when it discovers a macOS device so the probe can install an agent on the device.

  5. Click the Auto Import tab to discover specific device classes on a network.

    6. N-able recommends that you use Auto Import during the initial discovery of a target network.

  6. Click the Notifications tab to alert specific people when the discovery task has completed or failed.
  7. Click SNMP Settings to configure SNMP monitoring on the devices.
  8. Click the Advanced Settings to configure the properties used by the probe or agent to monitor the backup features and set the Discovery Tagging option.
  9. Click Schedule to set when the probe runs the discovery job.

  10. When configuring the schedule, if you select a day of the week and specific days of the month, the discovery job will run on both criteria. For example. if you set the schedule to run on Fridays and the 10th and 20th of the month, the discovery jobs will run every Friday as well as on the 10th and 20th of the month.

  11. Click Finish.

N-able N-central initiates the Windows probe to look for new devices on the defined network at the scheduled times.

The probe scans the defined network addresses using the following protocols:

  • WMI
  • SNMP
  • NETBIOS and ADSI
  • ICMP (ping)

If a discovery scan using WMI fails, the discovery job reruns the scan using the next protocol in the list - SNMP, NETBIOS, then ICMP. The probe obtains the most information about a device with a WMI-based scan.