Run a discovery job

N-able N-central runs a discovery job to look for new devices on a network based on the schedule you defined when creating the discovery job. You can also run a discovery job manually outside of the scheduled time. You may need to do this when a customer adds new devices to the network that fall outside the discovery job schedule and you need the new devices added to N-able N-central for patching and AV compliance.

The Probe will scan 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.

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. Unchecking this option causes a moved device to be discovered 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. For Mac OS 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.