This section includes some pre-discovery tips and preparation that will make your network and device discovery scan more effective.

Discovery Basics. Understand the basic elements needed for discovering your network and devices.

Ensure Devices Can Be Reached. Devices need to be reachable and powered on for rich discovery information.

Use Credentials for Cloud Services, Hypervisors, and Management Hosts. For accurate tracking of parent-child relationships (virtual, cloud, storage, wireless, and more) these credentials are required for your Discovery scan.

Ensure Devices Have SNMP/WMI Capability. SNMP/WMI needs to be configured/enabled.

Discover Virtual Hosts/VMs from the Top...Down. Specify servers (like vCenter) and hypervisors in your discovery scan.

Expand Your Scan to Include Storage Devices. Expands scan reach to include all storage resources (as reported back from SMI-S interface, for example).

Expand Your Scan to Include Wireless. Expands scan reach to include WLAN access points distributed over different subnets.

Tip: In addition to being a powerful tool that enables you to discover, query, and assign monitors to your connected-devices, regular scans help keep the picture of your network current. Seeded discovery scans can help find seldom-used, forgotten, misconfigured, or even rogue devices.
Note: Given appropriate credentials, Discovery also reveals devices that qualify for environment-integrated monitoring (Analyze menu > WhatsUp Gold Add Ons). WhatsUp Gold Add Ons provide optimized visualization, logging, reporting, and monitoring for specific environments and deployment patterns and much more (Virtual, NTA, CM, Application Monitoring, and Wireless, for example).