Discovery process overview

During per-device discovery, the
IP Manager
sends ICMP and SNMP polls to the network devices to discover the network topology. The
IP Manager
uses
VMware Smart Assurance
object classes to create a data-model representation of the discovered topology. The data model includes representations of the managed network devices and their internal components.
During postprocessing, the
IP Manager
uses
VMware Smart Assurance
object classes to create representations of the physical and logical connections between the managed network devices. The
IP Manager
also establishes device relationships.
The data model that is supported by the
IP Manager
is described in the IP Manager Reference Guide.
Throughout this chapter and the chapters that follow, the terms “system” and “device” are used interchangeably. Usually, “system” is used.
The configurations and licenses that are applied to an
IP Manager
at startup determine which discovery and analysis will run. By default, discovery and analysis for both
IP Availability Manager
and
IP Performance Manager
will run.
Components of a typical IP Manager deployment identifies the elements of a typical
IP Manager
deployment and shows the flow of information among the elements.
The
IP Manager
discovers Layer 2 (data link) and Layer 3 (network) connectivity in multivendor, switched, and routed networks. Layer 2 network systems use machine addresses to transmit packets from network node to network node, and Layer 3 network systems use network addresses to route data to different LANs and WANs. The
IP Manager
discovers the network systems by sending them ICMP and SNMP polls.
In addition, depending on the configuration,
IP Availability Manager
also sends network topology to the SAM (
Adapter Platform
) and to satellite
Domain Manager
s.
Running separate instances of
IP Availability Manager
and
IP Performance Manager
is necessary if the two applications are running on different hosts. When running on the same host, a more common configuration would be
IP Availability Manager
and
IP Performance Manager
running as a single process.
After building a data model of the discovered network topology,
IP Availability Manager
,
IP Performance Manager
, and
IP Server Performance Manager
use SNMP polling to monitor the topology. The results of this polling, in conjunction with the received SNMP traps, are used by:
  • IP Availability Manager
    to diagnose the failed network objects that interrupt network connectivity.
  • IP Performance Manager
    and
    IP Server Performance Manager
    to diagnose emerging problems in the service delivery infrastructure.
    IP Availability Manager
    ,
    IP Performance Manager
    , and
    IP Server Performance Manager
    export their topology data and analysis results (events) to the SAM (
    Global Manager
    ).
    Whenever discovery completes, the
    IP Manager
    prints a report to its log file identifying the number of network objects that are created during the discovery. Naming of the log depends on the locale and encoding set by the user and is controlled by the SM_LOCALE and SM_ENCODING environment variables. The log file is named <IP Manager instance name>_<locale>_<character encoding>.log (for example, INCHARGE-AM_en_US_UTF-8.log) and is located in the BASEDIR/smarts/local/logs directory in the
    IP Manager
    installation area.