Back to Contents Page

Back to Using IT Assistant

Discovery (Discovering, Removing, and Viewing Systems)

Dell OpenManage™ IT Assistant User's Guide

	Discovering Systems		Viewing System Summary Information
	Removing Systems		Viewing System Status
	Viewing Systems in the System Tree		Viewing System User Information
	Viewing and Managing Modular Systems		Viewing CIM, DMI, or SNMP Information
	Setting Discovery Options		Searching for Systems
	Forcing Discovery		Configuring System Name Resolution
	Reclassifying Systems		Known Issues

Discovering Systems

NOTE: In IT Assistant, the term "system" is used to refer to a computer system (notebook, desktop, or server), network switch, remote access controller (RAC), or server module (server in a modular system) that is attached to a network.

NOTE: You must enable discovery for systems to be discovered. See "Setting Discovery Options."

IT Assistant discovers instrumented and noninstrumented systems on subnets, at IP address ranges on a subnet, and at Internet Protocol (IP)/Internetwork Packet eXchange (IPX)/host name addresses. To discover all the systems on a subnet, a range of systems on a subnet, or an individual system at a specific IP/IPX/host name address, you must add (register) that subnet, subnet IP address range, or IP/IPX/host name address.

NOTE: A subnet, range of IP addresses on a subnet, single host name, single IP address, or single IPX address are known collectively in IT Assistant as "discovery ranges."

Discovery begins as soon as you register a discovery range.

NOTE: Server Agent 4.x supports discovery through IPX, but does NOT support systems management through IPX. For IT Assistant to manage IPX-only systems, you must load one of the following on the managed node:  Dell OpenManage HIP 3.x OR  IP if the managed node is instrumented with Dell OpenManage Server Agent 4.x If you are managing systems running Novell® NetWare® using IPX only, Dell recommends that you use the internal network address of the managed node followed by a node address of 000000000001.

To register a subnet, subnet IP address range, or individual system address, perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Options branch and click Set Discovery Range.
   
   
2. In the Discovery Range dialog box, click Add.
   
   
3. In the Discovery Range Configuration dialog box, select the type of discovery range (entire subnet, subnet IP address range, or the IP/IPX/host name address of an individual system) you want to add from the Discovery Range Type drop-down menu.
   
   
4. Enter the address specification in the field below the Discovery Range Type drop-down menu.

The address specification entry field adjusts based on the discovery range type you selected; these adjustments help you to enter the correct address specification format. The following are examples of valid address specifications for each discovery range type:

• Subnet — 193.109.112.*
  
  
• Host name — mynode.dell.com
  
  
• Node IP address range — 193.109.112.45-99
  
  
• Node IP address — 193.109.112.99
  
  
• IPX address — 00006112.00aa00bbccdd

5. Click OK.
   
   
6. In the Discovery Range dialog box, click Close.

Systems discovered on the newly registered discovery ranges begin to display in the system tree.

NOTE: The following are important points to know about discovery: IT Assistant can communicate with a remote system using SNMP, DMI, CIM, or a combination of the three, depending on which instrumentation agents are present on the remote system. The protocol IT Assistant uses to communicate with a particular instrumentation agent can depend on which protocols the agent supports or prefers. The Details tab of the systems window shows which protocols IT Assistant is using for which agents for a particular remote system. If you are discovering systems through SNMP, ensure that the SNMP community name you configure for IT Assistant discovery is first created on managed system. The community name is case sensitive. The default community name is public. Client systems running Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition cannot be discovered as Dell™ systems through CIM because it is not currently possible to remotely connect to the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) services on Windows XP Home Edition. To discover systems running Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation 7.0, you must install the IT Assistant services on a system running Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2). IT Assistant uses Class C addressing. The first three octets specify the network ID, and the last octet specifies the identity of the host from 1 to 254. To add a subnet, you must enter the first three octets, which together are commonly referred to as the network ID. A Class C network can have 254 hosts. The IT Assistant services store requests for discovery range registration in a queue. If you reboot a system between the time you register a discovery range and the time that the IT Assistant services process that registration request, you must reregister the discovery range using the procedure in this section. You can view summary information by clicking a system in the system tree and then clicking the Summary tab.

Removing Systems

NOTE: In IT Assistant, the term "system" is used to refer to a computer system (notebook, desktop, or server), network switch, remote access controller (RAC), or server module (server in a modular system) that is attached to a network.

NOTE: The IT Assistant services store requests for system removal in a queue. If you remove a system and then reboot it before the IT Assistant services process the removal request, you must remove the system again.

You can remove a single system, a range of IP addresses on a subnet, or an entire subnet from the discovery process. Removed systems, IP address ranges, and subnets are no longer discovered until re-added (reregistered). You can remove systems in two ways: by removing the discovery range configuration settings or by using the Remove Discovered System command. Removing systems through the discovery range configuration settings permanently removes the system from the system tree. The Remove Discovered System command removes the system only until the next discovery cycle.

To remove a single system, a range of IP addresses on a subnet, or an entire subnet by modifying the discovery range configuration settings, perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Options branch and click Set Discovery Range.
   
   
2. In the Discovery Range dialog box, click the subnet, subnet IP address range, or individual system you want to remove in the Existing Discovery Ranges list box.
   
   
3. Click Remove.
   
   
4. Click Close.

IT Assistant removes the system or systems from the discovery range configuration and also from the system tree display.

NOTE: IT Assistant does not inform you when a discovery cycle is in progress. If you remove a discovery range during a discovery cycle, and IT Assistant is discovering that discovery range when you remove it, the following three things happen: IT Assistant deletes systems it has discovered on the discovery range up until you removed it. IT Assistant continues to discover the rest of the discovery range. Once the rest of the discovery range has been discovered, the range is not discovered again. This results in some systems (the ones that were not yet discovered when you removed the discovery range remaining in the system tree. You must remove these systems again using the following procedure.

To remove a single system by using the Remove Discovered System command, perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Management branch and click Remove Discovered System.
   
   
2. In the Remove Discovered System dialog box, click the system you want to remove.

To make a system easier to find, you can sort the list by clicking Status, Host Name, System Type, Power State, or IP Address.

3. Click Remove.
   
   
4. Click Close.

IT Assistant removes the selected system from the system tree display. However, if the system is still listed in the discovery range settings, the system is rediscovered and redisplayed during the next discovery cycle.

Viewing Systems in the System Tree

NOTE: In IT Assistant, the term "system" is used to refer to a computer system (notebook, desktop, or server), network switch, remote access controller (RAC), or server module (server in a modular system) that is attached to a network.

IT Assistant discovers active, instrumented and noninstrumented systems on the registered discovery ranges and displays them in the systems window. The systems are listed in an expandable system tree and are categorized by system type. The first level of the system tree consists of the categories All Systems, Custom Groups, Desktops, Network Switches, Portables, Servers, Unclassified, and Workstations. 

NOTE: If IT Assistant is able to classify all discovered systems, the category Unclassified does not appear.

The IT Assistant network monitoring service performs system discovery and classification. If the IT Assistant network monitoring service can classify a system, it places that system within the Desktops, Network Switches, Portables, Servers, or Workstations category branches of the system tree. If the IT Assistant network monitoring service cannot classify a system, it places the system within the Unclassified category branch. You can create custom groups from systems within any of these categories.

NOTE: If you move a system into a custom group, it remains listed within its original classification group and in the All Systems group.

NOTE: RACs are network entities that have IP addresses, so IT Assistant discovers them. However, RACs are not instrumented, so IT Assistant displays them as Unclassified entities in the system tree.

The icon next to the system name is the system status indicator. See "Status Indicators" for descriptions of these icons.

NOTE: IT Assistant discovers systems on registered discovery ranges only. You must register discovery ranges before systems display in the systems window.

When an alert condition exists for a system, IT Assistant retrieves a system status from the instrumentation on the system that generated the alert. IT Assistant may then update the system status indicator in the system tree. The alert appears in the alerts window, and its severity is indicated by an alert indicator to the left of the alert entry. The alerts window and the Logs tab in the systems window also provide additional information about the event.

Status indicators also display beside systems for which no specific alerts have been received. These are the healthy and unknown indicators described in "Status Indicators."

Viewing and Managing Modular Systems

Modular systems, such as the Dell PowerEdge™ 1655MC, comprise several systems, as "systems" are defined in IT Assistant terminology. One chassis usually comprises an Embedded Remote Access/MC (ERA/MC) controller, a managed network switch, and one or more server modules. Each of these chassis elements are systems capable of being discovered by IT Assistant.

In the system tree, IT Assistant represents a modular system and its component systems in two ways:

• Displays the entire modular system as a custom group, with the ERA/MC, managed network switch, and individual server modules listed as systems in that group. The custom group is named after the Service Tag of the modular system.
  
  For example, in the following figure, see the Service Tag entries ITACHSS and SHRDIT2 under Custom Groups:
  
  
  
  The members of custom group ITACHSS are itabld11, a server module, RAC_ITACHSS, the ERA/MC controller, and SW1_ITACHSS, the managed network switch.
  
  The members of custom group SHRDIT2 are itabld21, a server module, RAC_SHRDIT2, the ERA/MC controller, and SW1_SHRDIT2, the managed network switch.
  
  

  NOTE: These are simple examples only; modular systems generally have many more than one server module installed.

   

• Displays the network switches and the server modules within the Network Switches and Servers groups, respectively.
  
  For example, in the previous figure, SW1_ITACHSS and SW1_SHRDIT2 are members of the Network Switches group, and itabld11 and itabld21 are members of the Servers group. Clicking these systems yields the same type of information on the tabs of the systems window as you would expect from clicking a server or network switch that was not contained in a modular system.

IT Assistant creates the custom group for a modular system by default. If you want to rename the custom group to something more readable than a Service Tag, select Options® Custom Groups® Edit. 

NOTE: IT Assistant does not automatically remove a modular system's custom group, even if you remove all of the group's components. You must manually remove custom groups created for modular systems.

Modular system support and its integration with Server Administrator (which complements IT Assistant by providing additional server-specific functions and capabilities) make IT Assistant an ideal management tool for modular systems. Because Server Administrator is installed on each server module, you can use IT Assistant to launch Server Administrator against the server module you want to manage. When finished, you can manage other server modules in the same chassis by clicking another module in the IT Assistant system tree and launching Server Administrator again.

Setting Discovery Options

NOTE: Using the procedures in this section, you can configure IT Assistant to support DMI, SNMP, and CIM discovery and communication. However, you can disable protocols using the configservices utility. If you disable any of these protocols after a discovery range has been discovered, IT Assistant requires a subsequent discovery cycle to unregister that protocol so that it is not used for discovery or communication.

To set preferences for the default discovery process, perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Options branch and click Discovery Cycle.
   
   
2. In the Discovery Cycle Configuration dialog box, enable or disable discovery and polling for system status by selecting or deselecting the Enable System Discovery and Enable System Status check boxes.
   
   
3. For each option you enabled in step 2, set a polling interval using the Days, Hours, and Minutes (if available) controls.
   
   
4. If you want IT Assistant to discover only systems with Dell instrumentation, check the Discover Only Dell Instrumented Systems check box.
   
   
5. Specify the method by which IT Assistant resolves the name of a discovered system by selecting either DNS Name Resolution or Instrumentation Name Resolution.
   
   For descriptions of these two methods, see "Discovery Cycle Configuration."
   
   
6. Specify the protocol settings you want to use in the SNMP, DMI, and CIM control groups.
   
   For descriptions of valid protocol configuration values, see "Discovery Cycle Configuration."
   
   
7. Use the Discovery Speed slider control to adjust how quickly IT Assistant polls each address on a discovery range.
   

To edit options for discovery range, perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Options branch and click Set Discovery Range.
   
   
2. In the Set Discovery Range dialog box, click the host name, IP address, subnet IP address range, subnet, or IPX address you want to edit in the Existing Discovery Ranges list box.
   
   
3. Click Edit.
   
   
4. In the Discovery Range Configuration dialog box, select or deselect the Enable System Discovery check box.
   
   This selection turns discovery on or off for the selected discovery range.
   
   
5. Specify the protocol settings you want to use for this discovery range in the Discovery, SNMP, DMI, and CIM control groups.
   
   For descriptions of valid protocol configuration values, see "Discovery Cycle Configuration."
   
   
6. Click OK to apply these settings to the selected discovery range.
   
   
7. In the Discovery Range dialog box, click Close.

Forcing Discovery

IT Assistant enables you to force a discovery cycle on all or selected systems. You may want to do this to confirm a system's status or to refresh old status data before the next scheduled discovery interval.

To force a restart of the discovery process, perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Management branch and click Force Discovery.
   
   
2. In the Force Discovery dialog box, select the type of discovery you want to force: All Systems, Discovery Range, or Select Systems.
   
   If you click All Systems, IT Assistant prompts you with the following message:
   
   This action will force the Dell OpenManage server to rediscover all systems. The process may take several minutes and results will not be visible until the process completes. Do you wish to continue?
   
   
3. Click Yes to force discovery restart; click No to cancel.
   
   If you click Discovery Range or Select Systems, the Rediscover Systems dialog box presents a list of registered discovery ranges or discovered systems, respectively. Click the discovery ranges or systems you want to rediscover. After you select the ranges or systems you want to rediscover, click OK to force discovery restart.

Reclassifying Systems

If you see a misclassified system or know an unclassified system is actually of a specific type, you can reclassify it.

NOTE: The IT Assistant network monitoring service classifies systems based on DMI 2.0 or Dell-specific instrumentation. If your network comprises a variety of vendor systems, many will likely be unclassified.

To reclassify a discovered system, perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Management branch and click Reclassify Systems.
   
   
2. In the Reclassify Systems window, click the system you want to reclassify and click Reclassify.
   
   
3. In the Reclassify System dialog box, select a classification from the New Type drop-down menu.
   
   See the link in this step for an explanation of the available classifications.
   
   
4. Click OK.

NOTE: This action reclassifies the system in the IT Assistant data repository, which is installed on the management station; the reclassification persists until you change it again using this procedure. If you want the IT Assistant network monitoring service to attempt to classify manually reclassified systems, reclassify those systems as Unclassified, and the service will attempt to classify them during the next discovery cycle.

Viewing System Summary Information

To view summary information about a discovered system, perform the following steps:

1. In the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Views branch and click Systems.
   
   
2. In the systems window, click a system in the system tree.
   
   
3. Click the Summary tab.
   
   
4. Scroll down through the information categories on the Summary tab, or click one of the information categories listed across the top of the tab. The available categories are Hardware, Software, Service Data, User Data, Network Data, and Manageability.

NOTE: The amount of information displayed on the Summary tab depends on the amount of information available from a managed system's instrumentation. If the system's instrumentation does not report information for a particular field, or if the instrumentation that IT Assistant queries for a particular field is not present, that field is left blank. For example, for servers instrumented with Server Agent 4.2 or earlier, IT Assistant sometimes retrieves the information for the Network Data section of the Summary tab from the Intel® NIC instrumentation agent. If this agent is not present, the Network Data section is left blank. In this particular case, you can resolve the issue by loading the Intel NIC instrumentation or upgrading to a later version of Server Agent or Server Administrator.

Viewing System Status

NOTE: Only Dell-instrumented systems support this feature.

To view status information about a discovered Dell system, perform the following steps:

1. In the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Views branch and click Systems.
   
   
2. In the systems window, click a system in the system tree.
   
   
3. Click the Status tab.

The left pane of the Status tab contains the status tree, which shows the status of the currently selected system's components. The right pane of the Status tab contains status information about the component currently selected in the status tree. Main System Chassis is the default selection, and the right pane displays the General Status of the chassis. Clicking any other root- (first-) level component also displays the General Status for that component. 

NOTE: All systems have the root-level component Main System Chassis. Other root components, such as ERA or Disk Storage, appear only if the system is configured with that component.

Clicking any leaf- (second-) level component displays the Individual Element Status of that component. If you click another system in the system tree, the Status tab displays the corresponding information for the new system (if that system is equipped with the same type of component). Using IT Assistant in this way enables you to quickly check the status of a specific component for different systems.

NOTE: When you view Embedded Devices in the status tree, some devices might appear twice, although only one device exists.

NOTE: If IT Assistant takes a very long time to display the IT Assistant Status tab for a server that is running Server Administrator, you can reduce this time by suppressing the status display. See "Status Display Suppression Script" for more information.

Viewing System User Information

NOTE: Only Dell-instrumented systems support this feature.

IT Assistant enables you to view user names for Dell clients and servers. Client systems support a single password; this is the one configured in their system BIOS. Servers can have multiple users, each with their respective passwords.

To view user information about a discovered system, perform the following steps:

1. In the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Views branch and click Systems.
   
   
2. In the systems window, click a system in the system tree.
   
   
3. Click the Users tab.

The Users tab lists the currently defined users for the selected system.

See "User Setup for Systems and Remote Access Hardware."

Viewing CIM, DMI, or SNMP Information

See "CIM, DMI, and SNMP Information."

Searching for Systems

To search for systems among the registered IP/IPX/host name addresses, perform the following steps:

1. In the IT Assistant navigation tree, expand the Views branch and click Search.
   
   
2. In the search window, specify a search criterion using the first three Find controls at the top of the window.

The available selections in the Find controls change dynamically based on the filters and qualifiers you specify. The third criterion control may prompt you for a text string rather than a menu selection, depending on your settings in the first and second controls.

3. If you want to specify a second criterion for the search, select the check box in the far left side of the window, select And or Or from the drop-down menu, and then specify the second criterion in the next three controls, just as you did with the first three.
   
   
4. Click Search.

Systems that match the search criterion or criteria you specify display in the lower pane of the SEARCH window. You can sort the list according to a system property by clicking the column header button for that property, such as Host Name or IP Address.

Configuring System Name Resolution

System name resolution is the networking term for the process of matching IP addresses to host names. To configure system name resolution, click Discovery Cycle on the IT Assistant navigation tree and use the Discovery Cycle Configuration dialog box. If you select DNS Name Resolution, the name of the system is resolved through DNS first; if you select Instrumentation Name Resolution, the system name is resolved through instrumentation first (if the managed node is instrumented), then through DNS if instrumentation fails. If you upgrade an older version of IT Assistant to this version, you may notice that some system names have changed.

If (1) you set up event filters to use specific system names as filter criteria, and (2) you have selected instrumentation name resolution, IT Assistant attempts to resolve the system's IP address using all events received through its discovered system database. If the system was not discovered, then IT assistant attempts resolution through DNS to provide the correct system name that the filter requires.

NOTE: If a system's instrumentation name is different from its name as resolved by DNS, and DNS goes down during a discovery cycle, the system can appear in the system tree with a different name, resulting in two entries for the same system.

NOTE: If you rename a system but keep its IP address the same, the system could have duplicate entries in the system tree. Because of the common use of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) in network environments, IT Assistant does not attempt to resolve such duplications. You must manually delete any duplicate system tree entries.

Known Issues

• During a discovery cycle, IT Assistant makes several concurrent connections to the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) database. The MSDE database can support a maximum of eight concurrent connections. More than eight concurrent connections causes the operating system to log events in the Application Log (you can access the Application Log by selecting Start® Settings® Control Panel® Administrative Tools® Event Viewer). This situation results in many extraneous events in the Application Log, but does not result in the loss of functionality or performance. To avoid the extraneous events, you can upgrade to SQL 7.0 or SQL 2000 Server, both of which allow you to specify the number of concurrent connections allowed.
  
  
• The discovery process requires much more time when using CIM than it does when using SNMP or DMI.
  
  
• The IT Assistant services are dependent on the SNMP service. If you stop the SNMP service, the connection service and network monitoring service also stop.
  
  
• If IT Assistant is communicating with a system using CIM and the IT Assistant interface is left inactive for a period of 20 to 30 minutes, data for that system may disappear from the systems window. This occurs because WMI, which is an enabling service for CIM, eventually disconnects if the interface is inactive. Reconnect to the system by doing one of the following:
  
  
  • Click another system in the systems window, then click the disconnected system.
    
    
  • Refresh the IT Assistant interface by clicking Refresh in the upper right corner of the IT Assistant main window.
    
    
  • Restart the IT Assistant interface by clicking Exit in the upper right corner of the IT Assistant main window and then restarting IT Assistant.
    
    
• If you are connected to a system through the user interface and the connection to that system is lost due to an instrumentation failure, power outage, or some other cause, requests from the user interface to retrieve data time out. Dell recommends that you wait for the time-out to expire (you may have to wait a few minutes for time-out expiration).
  
  
• When you remove a system from the list of discovered systems in IT Assistant, this system will not reappear after a forced discovery. This system will reappear during the next automatic discovery cycle. Automatic discovery cycles are user-definable. To make the system appear sooner, delete the subnet to which the system belongs and then add it again.
  
  
• If you restart the management station, you must then restart the IT Assistant browser-based user interface on any connected systems.
  
  
• If the management station is rebooted and it has remote systems running the IT Assistant browser-based user interface connected to it, the IT Assistant connection service must reconnect to the user interfaces in order for them to remain fully functional. Exit the user interface and restart it on each remote system.
  
  
• If a discovered system's operating system changes, IT Assistant does not detect this change until the next discovery cycle.
  
  
• If CIM is enabled in the IT Assistant services, the discovery process uses Microsoft Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) to communicate with remote systems during the discovery cycle. If DCOM is not set up on the remote systems, an event log message is added to the operating system event log. In this case, there will be one message for each system not running DCOM or the WMI Core Software 1.5.
  
  
• When configuring CIM discovery for a discovery range (Discovery Range dialog box), if you do not specify a password in the Password field for the CIM user, the user inherits the password you specified when configuring the discovery cycle (Discovery Cycle Configuration dialog box). If you want the discovery range password field to be blank, the discovery cycle configuration password field must also be blank.
  
  
• The IT Assistant user interface caches some information about the managed system, depending on what is being viewed. If, while viewing information for a particular managed system, that system happens to go down or communication is lost with that node, the system may not immediately be shown as down and it may be possible to view some of the cached information. When the next status cycle occurs, the user interface will correctly show the node as down. If you suspect that the node went down during viewing, you can force discovery of the node to display its true status.
  
  
• If a managed node is running DMI but does not have Intel network interface card (NIC) instrumentation installed, the Network Data section on the Summary tab of the systems window is blank. However, if that managed node is also running SNMP, you can obtain NIC information for the node in the inventory window.
  
  
• Discovery and management of Dell PowerEdge 7150 servers running a 64-bit Windows operating system is not supported through CIM.
  
  
• If you discover a large number of managed systems, you might get performance improvements by upgrading the MSDE to the Microsoft SQL Server 7.0/2000 database.
  
  
• If IT Assistant times out while discovering a managed system equipped with embedded or add-in Broadcom NICs and is running Red Hat Linux 7.2 or Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1, do one of the following:
  
  
  • On the managed system, run the ifup command on the Broadcom NICs that are down. Do not assign IP addresses if you do not want to use the NICs.
    
    
  • If you do not want to perform the first suggested option, reboot the managed system. You should then be able to view the IT Assistant Summary and Status pages for that system and perform normal monitoring and management operations.
    
    
• When viewing the Status tab (located on the systems window) for a system that is generating many alerts, the amount of memory used by the IT Assistant Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) session may increase over time. In extreme situations, the amount of memory used by Internet Explorer may result in system performance degradation or application failures. You can minimize the possibility of this problem by clearing (deselecting) the Alerts cause refresh checkbox in the lower-left section of the Status tab. All memory is freed when the IT Assistant Internet Explorer session is closed. For more information on this issue, see the Microsoft Support website at support.microsoft.com and search the Knowledge Base for article 192384.

Back to Contents Page

Back to Using IT Assistant