Discovering your Network
This article will help you get through network discovery and the initial configuration process.
To monitor your network, NetCrunch must know device addresses, their names, and how to connect to them (credentials, types, etc.). The Network Atlas is a database that holds all that information, so the first step will be adding nodes to it.
Manually
You can add nodes from a file, then complete the rest of the setup manually. It's even possible to create an empty Atlas and add every node manually, but it's unlikely you would need that feature.
Nodes can be added from a text file containing either node names or addresses, one per line.
By Network Discovery Wizard
tabDiscoveryMethod
Discovery Methods
Search Active Directory Domain
The program searches Active Directory and adds all devices, including macOS machines.
The program scans only the Domain, where the NetCrunch Server machine object is located.
All machines from Active Directory will be added, even if they are currently not connected to the network.
Discover IP Networks
The program will scan a given range of network addresses using ICMP (ping) packets. Only connected and responding nodes can be discovered in this way, so results may vary depending on when you perform the discovery.
tabNetworkSelection
Networks to Be Discovered
NetCrunch fills the list with known networks; you can add more networks as desired.
The program uses ICMP PING packets to discover nodes in a given network, and only nodes responding to ICMP PING packets are added.
Discover and scan the neighborhood networks option
During the discovery process, NetCrunch finds connections to neighborhood networks. Enable this option to have NetCrunch automatically follow these links. You can limit the scanning depth by specifying the maximum number of hops to remote networks.
Discovery Mode
All Devices
The program will try to find and add as many devices as it can. It will look into SNMP and use a PING sweep.
Infrastructure Devices Only
The program will skip workstations.
Only devices matching the SNMP filter
Build a filter query that will include the desired devices. The program will attempt to communicate with the specified SNMP profiles and determine which profile is required for the device.
tabSNMPMode, tabSNMPSettings
Configure SNMP Profiles
This is the point where you should enter all the SNMP profiles used by your SNMP devices.
If you fail to do this now, you can enter them later, but you will have to assign them to each device individually.
If you enter the SNMP profiles now, the program will automatically determine which profile each device uses, and devices will be marked as SNMP-manageable. Additionally, device types should be discovered (via the sysObjectId SNMP variable or the device SNMP name), and automatic monitoring should be enabled.
SNMP Agents Port
SNMP Discovery assumes that you use only one SNMP port for all devices in your network. By default, SNMP agents respond on a port 161. If you use different ports for different devices, you have to set them up manually.
tabNetworkServices
Select Network Services To Be Discovered
NetCrunch recognizes and can monitor about 70 network services. Discovering all of them might be time-consuming and might generate unnecessary network traffic. As a result, we decided to include 14 common services by default, and you can add more services as desired.
Here you can also set the initial parameters for each monitored network service.
- Repeat Count
- The number of requests to be sent in one monitoring check to determine the average response time properly
- Additional Repeat Count
- The number of additional requests to be sent in case base requests fail.
- Timeout
- Time after which NetCrunch gives up on waiting for a response
You can reduce timeouts by monitoring network devices on a low-latency network. Default values should work great, even for internet connections.
Next Step...
After NetCrunch discovers all your devices, it starts discovering network services on each device in the background.
This is a time for further configuration: automatic Monitoring Packs, setting credentials, setting NetCrunch users and administrator profiles, and default alerting scripts.
Go to: Configuration Wizard