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1. If necessary, install your NetMRI appliance or appliances. For more information, see the Infoblox Installation Guide for your NetMRI appliances. Ensure that you have the full feature licensing and device licensing entitlements for your deployment. For more information, see Understanding Platform Limits, Licensing Limits, and Effective Limits. If you are upgrading your NetMRI installation, check the installation instructions in the Release Notes for your software (and see the section below, Discovery with an Existing NetMRI Platform.
   Also, read the section Preparing for NetMRI VRF Access for  for information on checking and configuring VRF-aware devices to which NetMRI will connect for managing virtual networks.
2. Configure your first network views for network management.
   For new installations, NetMRI automatically provides an initial network view, named Network 1, as part of the initial setup. For the initial discovery of the network, you may only need this first network view. For more information, see Configuring Network Views.
3. You combine network views with scan interfaces to separate and manage networks. For new installations, the Network 1 network view is automatically bound to your appliance's LAN1 port. This may be the only interface you need for initial network discovery. This interface connects to the router through which NetMRI begins to discover the network. For more information, see Configuring Scan Interfaces.
4. Configure your discovery settings. They include discovery IP address ranges, possible static IP addresses of devices you explicitly want to discover in your networks, a seed router for network discovery and possible device hints to improve odds of finding devices. The seed router might be, for example, the router to which NetMRI first connects for discovery of the network. For more information, see the sections Configuring Discovery Ranges, Specifying Static IPs, Adding Seed Routers, Configuring CISCO APIC, and Adding Device Hints.
5. Add the necessary device SNMP credentials, and CLI admin login and Enable password credentials. For more information, see Adding and Editing Device Credentials and its various sections. You can also add and test credentials for individual devices; for more information, see Adding and Testing SNMP Credentials for a Device.
6. Associate discovery settings to network views. Add your discovery settings from Step 4 to the network views and begin to discover the network. Initial discovery of your networks begins automatically after the discovery ranges and other discovery settings, such as a seed router, are added to the network view, which also must have a scan interface connection. For more information, see Discovery Using Network Views.
7. Watch data collection. Network data collection and virtual network detection take place during your initial network discovery, which begins automatically when the network connection is established from NetMRI, to the network to be discovered. Perform the following to view discovered information about your network:
   • View summaries of discovery events: Click the All Devices device group in the right panel, and open the Network Explorer –> Discovery page to see a table of all devices being discovered by NetMRI. For more information about the features on this page, see Viewing and managing Discovery Results.
   • View a list of devices your appliance has recently discovered: Click the All Devices device group in the right panel, and open the Network Explorer –> Inventory page to see tables of all member devices. For more information about the features on this page, see Viewing Network Inventory.
   • View summaries of recently discovered network phenomena: Includes summary information of routed networks, VLANs, route targets, and virtual networks (VRFs). For more information about the features on this page, see Summarizing Network Topologies.
8. Map virtual networks. If your network has virtual networks, NetMRI automatically discovers them on the devices where they are configured, and alerts you through System Health banner messages at the top of the screen to map those VRF-aware devices to the network views where they belong. By mapping each virtual network to network views, you provide more information to the discovery process. For more information, see Mapping Virtual Networks to Network Views.

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9. As NetMRI polls devices deeper into the network, it may find more VRF-based virtual networks. These networks need to be mapped to virtual scan interfaces to enable full network discovery and control for each virtual network. For more information, see Mapping Virtual Networks to Network Views, Configuring Virtual Scan Interfaces, and Configuring VRF-Aware Device Interfaces.

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1. Identify the VRFs/virtual networks you want NetMRI to access and manage.
2. Identify the single VRF-aware Switch/Router on the managed network, that is aware of all of the desired VRFs. NetMRI will need to access the VRFs through this device.
   • A VRF-aware device may not exist on the network that is aware of all of the VRFs. If it is not possible to consolidate all VRFs into a single trunked port, you can physically connect NetMRI to multiple places on the network. NetMRI has up to 3 physical scan interfaces available, labeled MGMT, LAN1, and LAN2, that may differ slightly per platform. For more information, see Configuring Scan Interfaces.
   • You also must identify a minimal set of VRF-Aware devices that collectively are aware of all the VRFs you wish NetMRI to manage.
3. Reserve a valid routable IP address on each VRF. These IPs will be configured on NetMRI virtual scan interfaces that will connect to each virtual network. Prepare an IP, subnet mask, and gateway for each VRF.
4. You must configure at least one network device to provide access to the virtual networks for NetMRI. NetMRI can connect to multiple VRFs on the same physical interface, using virtual scan interfaces, each associated with an encapsulated 802.1q tag, to . To access each VRF, complete the following:
   • The interface NetMRI connects to, should be configured to transport via an 802.1q encapsulated traffic (trunked port).
   • Each tag carried by the trunked port should be associated with a single VRF on the device.
   • If the device NetMRI is connected to is not VRF aware, and then the 802.1q configurations will be in the form of VLANs, with one VLAN for each VRF. In this case, the device must trunk the VLANs to another device that is VRF aware, and can be configured to associate each 802.1q tag to a VRF.

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• Physically isolated and completely independent.
• Logically separated networks for convenient management.
• Virtual networks implemented with technologies such as a VRF.

You combine network views with scan interfaces to separate and manage networks. This prevents ambiguities that can occur through route leakage and possible overlapping IP address spaces, and provides further information to help in network and device discovery.

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• New Installation: Initial setup for a new NetMRI appliance automatically creates a default network view, named Network 1, as a part of the procedure. This network view is automatically assigned to the appliance's LAN1 port before you perform discovery of the network. If the LAN1 port is not active, the MGMT port is associated with the Network 1 view.
• Upgraded installations: The managed network's network name is automatically used to identify the network view used for managing the network. This value may be changed, but changes are not necessary. The network name value is found in the Settings icon –> Setup –> Settings Summary –> Network Configuration section. It is titled Database Name in the current release and Network Name in the prior release. For Multi-Network Operations Center deployments, the same principle applies.

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To add a discovered VRF to a network view, perform the following:

1. Go to the Settings icon –> Setup –> Network Views.
   The Network Views settings page appears, listing all currently defined views.
2. Hover the mouse over the Action icon for the chosen network view and select Assign. 
   The Define and Configure Networks editor appears in a popup window.
3. To see all currently discovered VRFs, click Search VRF Names.
   All discovered VRF instances in all devices are listed alphabetically. Unassigned VRFs appear in white in the left panel, and assigned VRFs are highlighted in gray. If you see more VRF entries then you can easily navigate, check the Show unassigned VRF Only check box.

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Your changes are saved into the network view. To begin seeing the practical effects of this action, go to Network Explorer –> Summaries and open the VRFs accordion panel. Click View All VRFs in the panel if necessary, and click a network view link in the Network View column in the center panel.

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When the network views are configured with their associated discovery settings and scan interface, NetMRI automatically starts discovery across the connected network. After a few moments, newly discovered devices will begin to appear in the main Discovery pages under Network Explorer –> Discovery. Click device group names on the right-hand panel to see categories of devices discovered by NetMRI.

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When you delete a network view from NetMRI, all VRFs (virtual networks) that are a part of the Network View will become Unassignedunassigned. When this occurs, a System Health warning message banner appears at the top of the screen. You can then reassign the unassigned VRF to another network view.

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1. Click the Settings icon –> Setup –> Network Views. The Network Views settings page appears, listing all currently defined views.
2. Hover the mouse over the Action icon for the chosen view and select Delete. A confirmation message appears.
3. Click Yes to delete the network view. Its previously assigned network becomes unassigned.

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1. Go to Settings icon –> Setup –> Scan Interfaces. The Scan Interfaces Settings page appears, listing all device interfaces that may be used by the appliance. Depending on the hardware and system type, you will see one or more interfaces named MGMT and/or LANn (where n is the physical port number). If your system is an Operations Center, the Collector Name is shown alongside the interfaces. If any virtual scan interfaces are defined, they will have names like LAN2.111. See Configuring Virtual Scan Interfaces below  below for more information.
2. Hover over the Action icon for any of the physical ports and select Edit from the menu.
3. Choose from the Network View configuration section:

1. • Select Existing: Choose a network view from the list of existing ones that are defined on the system.
     • Select the view from the dropdown drop down list.
     • Selecting Unassigned as the Network View leaves the interface in a disabled state.
2. OR  
   • Create New: Creates a new network view.

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• At least one well-connected seed router, which can be the router to which NetMRI first connects. For more details, see Adding Seed Routers.
• Valid CIDR discovery IP address ranges. For more details, see Configuring Discovery Ranges.
• SNMP credentials for network devices. For more information, see Adding and Editing Device Credentials.
• CLI credentials and Enable credentials for further discovery of device configuration settings. For more information, see Adding and Editing Device Credentials.
• Blackout settings to ensure that discovery traffic takes place during policy mandated time periods. For more information, see Defining Blackout Periods.
• SDN and SD-WAN discovery settings. For more information, see Configuring Discovery for SDN and SD-WAN.

The Discovery Settings page (Settings icon –> Setup section –> Discovery Settings) defines the scope of the networks that NetMRI explores using CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) address blocks, IP address ranges, IP address wildcards, static IP addresses, and seed router definitions.

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