Hidden Treasures – Part 1

Rule based suggestions for an improved discovery result

Dear JDisc friends,

we think, that JDisc Discovery is a pretty cool network documentation product. I will present with “Hidden Treasures” some not so well known features within this blog and I hope that it’ll help to maximize the value created by JDisc.

Starting a network inventory project is usually an iterative process. You start to look for suitable tools, possible find JDisc, install the tool, run your first discovery, adjust and improve your settings, run the discovery again…

Depending on your preparation, the discovery result might not be as good as you expected it to be. There are many different reasons for not getting a good discovery result. Some of the most frequent issues are:

  • Misconfigured or missing domain accounts to access Windows computers
  • Missing SNMP communities to access networking devices such as routers and switches
  • Firewalls blocking the required discovery protocols

Troubleshooting might be a bit difficult for someone who is not using JDisc Discovery on a day by day basis. Therefore, we added a rule based engine to troubleshoot the discovery result for you. The rule engine has a built-in set of rules that cover the most frequent issues and provide hints on how to improve the discovery result.

Doubleclick the device when it is not properly discovered. This will bring up the device details dialog. Select the “Analyze” tab and click on “Diagnostics”. JDisc then tries to determine on how to improve the discovery result and suggest one or more measures how to proceed.

Rule based suggestions for an improved discovery result

A doubleclick on one of the suggestions pops up a detailed description how to proceed.

I hope that this article helps to get the best results when using JDisc Discovery.

Feel free to comment this article or contact me if you have further questions or ideas…

About The Author

Thomas Trenz
I own and manage JDisc and its network inventory and discovery products. Before I started JDisc, I worked quite a long time for Hewlett-Packard developing software for network assessments and inventory projects. Feel free to contact me on Linked-In or Xing.

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