Discovery and Inventory Rules

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

The Discovery and Inventory Rules page enables you to create new, and view existing discovery and inventory rules. You can use a rule to initiate the remote discovery and inventory collection process in IT Asset Management (the remote process is executed by an inventory beacon, and as a result, these rules do not control the FlexNet Inventory Agent locally installed on a target device).

A rule is a combination of one or more targets, an action, and a schedule. The rule definition and schedule flows down to every inventory beacon with the next beacon policy update. When a discovery and inventory rule is run, FlexNet Beacon identifies devices within the scope of the rule's target(s) and the subnets assigned to each inventory beacon, and the appropriate inventory beacon performs the actions specified in the rule on those devices. The rule's action properties determine the actions to perform, and the rule's targets' properties determine the devices to perform the action on. Each inventory beacon works on the devices present in its assigned subnet, and uploads the collected discovery and inventory information to IT Asset Management.

Note: Device discovery, and subsequent collection of inventory information, requires the device's IP address to be in the scope of at least one inventory beacon.

Running a discovery and inventory rule in IT Asset Management may result in one or more of the following outcomes:

• Discovery or adoption of devices
• Collection of machine and software inventory
• Collection of specific inventory like Oracle or XenDesktop inventory
• Enabling software usage tracking.

How discovery and inventory rules work

Gathering discovery and inventory information through discovery and inventory rules is the three-step process. When a discovery and inventory rule is scheduled to run, IT Asset Management:

1. Discovers devices within the scope of the underlying target definition and inventory beacon(s), and according to the discovery options selected in the underlying action definition. A device is discovered when:
   • The underlying action has at least one device discovery option selected
   • The device has an IP address which falls within the scope or one or more targets and at least one inventory beacon.
   Note: This step is not performed for the discovery and inventory rules with the Inventory only action.
2. Discovers services running on the specified ports on the discovered target devices, according to the discovery options selected in the underlying action definition. You must specify service ports for each of the required services. A service on a device is discovered when:
   • The underlying action has at least one device discovery option selected
   • The underlying action has at least one service discovery option selected
   • Wherever applicable, the port numbers are specified with the service discovery option
   • The device has an IP address which falls within the scope or one or more targets and at least one inventory beacon.
   Note: This step is not performed for the discovery and inventory rules with the Inventory only action.
3. Gathers inventory from the discovered devices if the Gather hardware and software inventory from all target devices option has been selected in the underlying action definition. The service inventory is collected when:
   • The underlying rule has at least one service inventory actions selected
   • The required service is known to exist on the device based on service discovery
   • The device has an IP address which falls within the scope or one or more targets and at least one inventory beacon.
   This step is not performed for the discovery and inventory rules with the Discovery only action type.

Note: You cannot predict the order of service discovery and service inventory collection actions during a discovery and inventory rule execution because many actions like gathering Oracle inventory or gathering VMware inventory, run in parallel.

Tasks on the Discovery and Inventory Rules page

The Discovery and Inventory Rules page enables you to perform the following actions:

• Search for a rule: You can filter the rule records on IP address/range, Inventory type, Beacon server, and Port number values. You can also filter the rule records on the rule status: Disabled, Enabled, or All.
• View rule status: You can view the rule execution progress and troubleshooting information on the Discovery and Inventory Rules page. See Viewing Discovery and Inventory Rule Status
• Create a rule: See Creating a Discovery and Inventory Rule
• Copy or Modify a rule: See Copying or Modifying a Discovery and Inventory Rule
• Delete a rule: See Deleting a Discovery and Inventory Rule
• Troubleshooting rules: See Viewing Discovery and Inventory Rule Status