Collection Validation

Important:The product name for this user guide has changed from Foundation and Cloudscape to Business Service Discovery and Migration Planning.

The Collection Validation feature, like the Credential Test, can be used when entering a new credential entry or editing an existing credential entry. Selecting the Validate button opens a dialog box where the IP address of a device you would like to test against is entered. Once the validation process is complete, a report will be displayed on the screen detailing each operation that was performed, the level of success of that operation, and details on any operations that failed. Unlike the Credential Test feature, Collection Validation will not automatically add a credential entry or update an existing entry.

The Collection Validation process is run in the context of a particular credential entry, against a particular device. Once the Validate button has been selected, you will be asked to enter the IP address of a device that you would like to run the Validation process against. Make sure that the IP address you select corresponds to the proper type of device. For instance, if running Collection Validation from the Windows credential section, select a Windows Server or Workstation.

The process may take up to a couple of minutes to complete. The Discovery, Inventory, and Performance collection processes will be run against the selected IP address. These processes exactly match the operations that are run during the normal scanning and performance collection stages of the engagement, although the Collection Validation feature does not store any collected data and will not affect any aspect of the platform, such as Assets or reported performance analytics.

The validation process will start by confirming that the device will be discovered during a scan of the environment. This involves an ICMP Echo Request (ping) to determine if the device exists on the network, combined with a TCP/UDP port test to discover what protocols are available on the device. If an ICMP Echo Reply is not received, then the validation process will stop. Similarly, if the type of protocol associated with the type of credential being tested is not available, for instance if WMI (TCP 135) is not available when testing a Windows credential, then the validation process will stop, as it will not be able to communicate with the device.

Next, the Inventory process will run, which is responsible for collecting the data from the device that is shown in the Assets page. This may include data such as the Operating System type and version, network interfaces and addresses, disk storage, etc. The operations that collect this data will be logged, and the result of each collection operation will be shown. For details on the result codes, see Result Codes. The Discovery process checks to see whether the relevant protocol is reported to be available, but the Inventory process tests the ability to communicate and authenticate with that device using the appropriate protocol. If communication or authentication fails, then the validation process will be stopped, and any available details on why the attempt failed will be displayed.

Finally, the Performance collection process will run. When a device is licensed for performance collection, this process is periodically run against that device for the duration of the performance collection period, typically as long as the device is licensed. Like the Inventory process, each operation that is issued to the device for data collection will be logged, along with the result of that operation.

Once the collection processes have finished, a report is then presented to provide the details of the:

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Performed operations

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Result Codes of each operation

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Overall Status describing how complete the collection activity was

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Failure Details for operations that did not complete successfully.

This report can also be copied into the clipboard. If the report needs to be saved or copied to one of our support staff, select the Text Version button, which displays the report as plain text. Select Copy to copy the text to your clipboard.