Discover VMware environments - BlueCat Integrity - 26.1.0

Address Manager Administration Guide
ft:locale
en-US
Product name
BlueCat Integrity
Version
26.1.0

Use the following procedure to create a VMware discovery policy:

Note: If the same discovery policy applies to multiple discovery tasks, you can create the policy once, and reuse it.
  1. Select the Policies tab.
  2. Select New Policy > VMware.
  3. In the Create VMware discovery policy window that appears, set the following parameters under General settings:
    Note: Parameters marked with an asterisk (*) in the UI are mandatory.
    • Name—enter a unique name for the policy. This name is used only for identification within Network Discovery and in discovery tasks.
    • Vsphere or ESXi Server—enter the IP address of the vSphere or ESXi Server that Network Discovery must use to collect network data, then select the add (+) icon. You can repeat this process to add additional IP addresses. Discovery starts from these IP addresses.
  4. Under VMware settings, set the following parameters:
    • Select from saved credentials—from the drop-down list, select VMware discovery credentials (previously created in the Credentials page). Then select the add (+) icon. You can repeat this process to add additional credentials.
    • Enable vCenter discovery—this checkbox is selected by default. When vCenter discovery is enabled, ESXi servers and the virtual machines inside the vCenter server can be discovered.
    • Address filter—enter an IP address and/or DNS name that should be included during discovery, then select the add (+) icon. For example: 192.0.2.0/24, esxi01.company.com

      You can repeat this process to add additional addresses and DNS names in the filter.

    • Host system filter—enter an IP address, hostname, and/or DNS name of the host system that should be included during discovery, then select the add (+) icon. For example: 192.168.10.15, ESXi01, esxi01.company.com

      You can repeat this process to add additional addresses, hostnames, and DNS names in the filter.

    • VM filter—enter a regular expression which matches the names of the virtual machines that should be included during discovery. For example, vm\d+
  5. Under Advanced settings, set the following parameters:
    • Enable DNS lookup—this checkbox is selected by default. When DNS lookup is enabled, the probe performs reverse DNS resolution of the discovered IP addresses to obtain their domain names.
    • DNS servers—enter the IP address of the DNS server the probe must use when performing DNS lookups during discovery, then select the add (+) icon. You can repeat this process to add additional IP addresses.
    • Additional settings—optionally, you can add the following additional settings that are not directly supported by Network Discovery & Visibility.
      Attention: There's no validation (no error checking and data checking) supported for these settings. It is essential that you enter data with the correct syntax. If you set incorrect or unsupported parameters or values, Network Discovery & Visibility ignores the invalid entries.
      Parameter Default Value Description
      IPDExtension.ext-vmware.retries 0 Specify the number of times the discovery probe retries a failed connection attempt. Setting this value to 0 (default) indicates that no connection attempt will be made after one failure.
      IPDVMWareDefaultPort 80 The default port that VMware uses for HTTP communication.
      IPDExtension.ext-vmware.maxHosts 20 Specify the maximum number of VMware hosts that can be fetched at the same time.
      Attention: VMware APIs are synchronous. A separate thread is created for each IP address discovery. Therefore, if you set a high value for this parameter, the process could crash.
      IPDExtension.ext-vmware.timeout 25000 Specify the number of milliseconds (ms) the discovery probe must wait for a response from the VMware API. If no response is received within this time, the request is aborted or retried (if retry is configured).
      IPDExtension.ext-vmware.skipVMsPoweredOff TRUE
      • When set to TRUE (default), VMs that are powered off will be ignored and will not be considered as part of discovery.
      • When set to FALSE, VMs that are powered off will also be part of discovery.
      IPDDNSThreshold 1000 Specify the number of milliseconds (ms) the discovery probe waits for a response from the DNS server when resolving hostnames to IP addresses. If the DNS server does not respond within this specified threshold time, Network Discovery skips that lookup.

      After N consecutive DNS lookups (where N is the value of IPDDNSThresholdViolations) take longer than the threshold set here, DNS lookups will be disabled permanently.

      A threshold of 0 means that DNS lookups will always be performed, if enabled.
      IPDDNSThresholdViolations 3 Specify the number of times the threshold can be violated consecutively, after which DNS lookups will be disabled permanently.

      For example, if the threshold is 1000 milliseconds and this counter is set to 3, three consecutive DNS lookups must take longer than 1 second in order for the DNS lookups to be disabled.
      IPDDNSLookupAll FALSE
      • When set to FALSE (default), DNS lookup is attempted only on the discovery IP addresses.
      • When set to TRUE, all IP addresses in the node will be looked up until the one that successfully resolves to a DNS name is found. This is useful in cases where devices or routers have multiple IP addresses, and the discovery IP addresses may not have a DNS name associated.
      Note: Loopback address (127.0.0.1) is ignored during DNS lookups.
      IPDDNSLookupSysName FALSE
      • When set to FALSE (default), device system names (sysName) are not resolved.
      • When set to TRUE, device system names are looked up first. If an address is returned, then the address and sysName are reported in the DNS attributes with an unknown domain., and no further lookups will be performed. This is useful in cases where routers have multiple IP addresses associated.
      IPDExistingNetworks Not applicable Specify a comma-separated list of known addresses (IPv4, IPv6, or both) in CIDR notation if you want the system to determine the network to which an address belongs.

      For example: 10.244.0.0/16,172.16.0.0/16,fda5:1111::/32,10.50.0.0/16

      This is useful in cases where the system discovers a VM IP address but cannot yet determine the network to which the address belongs.

      When a list is specified, the system compares the discovered IP address with the list of networks defined in IPDExistingNetworks to identify the network.
  6. Select Create to create the discovery policy and return to the Policies table, which will now display the policy you created.