Device & Service Discovery

Note: Device and Service discovery is not possible unless at least one Collector has been deployed, is registered as online with SIFF, and Access Credentials have been configured.

Device Discovery

Devices can either be added manually or automatically discovered by Collectors scanning for hosts that respond on specific ports.

Before continuing it's important to understand some terminology used in this documentation and within SIFF:

• Managed: these are devices that SIFF is actively monitoring.
• Unmanaged: a device known to SIFF but not currently managed. This could be due to a variety of reasons such as not set to auto-manage, no valid access credentials, some connectivity issue, an unknown device type, or the IP address is on the exclusion list.
• Excluded: a list of IP addresses that SIFF will not attempt to manage.

Managing Automatic Discovery

To manage automatic device discovery:

1. Within the Admin app, browse to Monitors -> Discovery.
2. Use the Add Network button to add a new Network for discovery.
3. When complete discovery will automatically run at the displayed Next Run Time. Alternatively select the network and use the Run Discovery button to force an immediate discovery.

Field	Description
Collector	Required. Select a Collector that will perform the discovery.
Networks	Required. Specify a comma separated list of network/mask to be scanned. For example: 192.168.1.0/24,10.0.0.0/24
Ports	Required. Set of ports to be scanned. This defaults to the typical SSH and Telnet ports.
Interval	Required. How often to perform discovery once configured.
Timeout (minutes)	Required. If discovery has not completed within the timeout period then it will be terminated.
Start Time	Optional. If left blank will default to the current time. This time is used to set trigger the initial discovery run, and subsequent discoveries will be performed every Interval.
Automatically Manage	Optional. By default device discovery will add devices to the Unmanaged list. Enabling this option will attempt to manage the device when discovered.

Service Discovery

Service Discovery determines what to monitor on a managed device, and configures the Collector managing that device to start collection.

Determining what to monitor is based on the set of Active Service Definitions. On a new deployment SIFF automatically provisions a set of Certified Service Definitions that are already enabled so as soon as a Collector is set up and devices discovered then monitoring should begin immediately.

By default Service Discovery is automatically configured for each Collectors to run once a day. In addition it's possible to configure discovery to run for specific networks and on specific schedules if the default does not suit. Also, Service Discovery can be run manually for individual devices.

Managing Automatic Discovery

To manage automatic service discovery:

1. Within the Admin app, browse to Monitors -> Discovery -> Services (tab).
2. Use the Add Network button to add a new Network for discovery.
3. When complete discovery will automatically run at the displayed Next Run Time. Alternatively select the network and use the Run Discovery button to force an immediate discovery.

Field	Description
Collector	Required. Select a Collector that will perform the discovery.
Networks	Optional. If left blank will perform service discovery for all devices managed by the Collector. Otherwise specify a comma separated list of network/mask to limit the set of devices. For example: 192.168.1.0/24,10.0.0.0/24
Interval	Required. How often to perform discovery once configured.
Start Time	Optional. If left blank will default to the current time. This time is used to set trigger the initial discovery run, and subsequent discoveries will be performed every Interval.