Discover network devices

IP Address Manager (IPAM) is designed to be used as part of the IPAM suite of products or as a standalone application. If you are already using the IPAM to monitor your environment, and have created a database of nodes and associated elements, you can skip this section and start adding nodes for IPAM monitoring. See Add discovered devices to SolarWinds IPAM

Discovery is the process SolarWinds uses to identify network elements.

The tabs shown as you proceed through the wizard depend on the SolarWinds products you have installed. Click Next to move to the next tab.

1. Launch the SolarWinds Web Console using either of the following methods:
   • Start the SolarWinds Web Console from the SolarWinds program folder.

   Or:

   • Launch a browser and enter:

     http://ip_address

     or:

     http://hostname

     where ip_address is the IP address of your SolarWinds server, and hostname is the domain name of your SolarWinds server.

2. Log in with your username and administrator password.
3. If the Network Sonar Discovery page is displayed, click Add New Discovery.

   

   If the Discovery wizard is not displayed, click Settings > Network Discovery

4. On the Welcome to SolarWinds Web Console page, click Start.

   The Network Sonar wizard is displayed.

   

   The tabs displayed on the Network Sonar wizard depend upon the SolarWinds products you have installed.

   This wizard enables you to discover devices in several ways:

   • Enter a range of IP addresses to monitor
   • Enter a list of IP addresses
   • Add nodes by querying your Active Directory Domain Controllers
   • Enter a subnet or seed router IP address

   The easiest method when starting is to supply a range of IP addresses.

   For instructions on using Active Directory Domain Controllers instead, see Discover devices using Active Directory domain controllers

5. Click Add Range.
6. Enter the start and end IP addresses you want to monitor, and click Next.
7. On the Agents tab, check the box if you want to check all nodes currently being polled using agents for changes updates, and click Next.
8. On the SNMP tab:
   1. If all devices on your network require only the default SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 public and private community strings, click Next.
   2. If any device on your network uses a community string other than public or private, or if you want to use an SNMPv3 credential, click Add Credential and provide the required information, and click Next.

   If you have an SNMP service enabled on a Windows server, SNMP credentials do not retrieve information for DHCP and DNS management.

9. On the Windows Credentials tab, click Add New Credential and provide the required information if you want to discover Windows devices that do not support SNMP, or want to collect additional information that SNMP does not poll.

   

   SolarWinds recommends that you monitor Windows devices with WMI rather than SNMP to obtain this extra information.

10. On the Monitoring Settings tab, SolarWinds recommends manually setting up monitoring the first time you run discovery. This enables you to review the list of discovered objects and select only those you want to monitor (rather than automatically monitoring them all).

    

11. On the Discovery Settings panel, enter a name and description for this discover, and click Next.

12. Accept the default frequency and run the discovery immediately.

    Once you are satisfied with the discovery settings you can add a frequency on this tab to run this discover according to a schedule.

    

    Discovery can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the number of network elements the system discovers. After discovery is complete, you can add the discovered devices using the Network Sonar Results wizard. See Add discovered devices to SolarWinds IPAM.