Chapter 15 Infoblox Network Insight

This chapter provides information about Infoblox Network Insight, which unites network discovery for geographically dispersed networks, infrastructure devices and network assets with the Infoblox IPAM (IP Address Management) solution. Through discovery, Network Insight provides automated, comprehensive, and accurate data about your network devices and their attributes so you can have better visibility in your network infrastructure, including the virtual network infrastructure, and manage it more efficiently.
This chapter describes how you use Network Insight to detect and manage information about network infrastructure devices, how to provision and de-provision networks, and how to manage and provision device ports, including switched Ethernet.
It includes the following sections:

• About Network Insight
  • Consolidator and Probes
  • Deployment Guidelines for Consolidator and Probes
  • Supported Discovery Methods
  • Starting Discovery
  • Managing Discovery
• Discovering VRF Virtual Networks
  • Special Considerations for Managing VRF Virtual Networks
  • VRF Deployment Guidelines
• Administrative Permissions for Discovery
• Defining the Discovery Member Type
• Mapping Discovery Interfaces to Network Views
• Starting and Stopping the Discovery Service
  • Starting the Discovery Service
  • Stopping the Discovery Service
• Configuring Discovery Properties
  • Defining Basic Polling Settings for the Grid
  • Defining Advanced Polling Settings for the Grid
  • Configuring SNMP1/v2 Credentials for Polling
  • Configuring SNMPv3 Properties
  • Configuring CLI Discovery Properties
  • Defining CLI Credentials Settings for Objects
  • Testing SNMP and CLI Credentials
  • Defining Seed Routers for Probe Members
• Configuring Automatic VRF Mapping
• Excluding IP Addresses from Discovery
  • Quick Exclusion of IPs from Discovery
  • Creating a New IPAM Object and Excluding it from Discovery
  • Excluding IP Addresses in Grid Manager
• Discovering Devices and Networks
  • Using Discover Now to Discover an Existing Object
  • Smart Folders and Discovered Devices
  • Using the Device Selector
  • Tips for Quick Navigation
• Managing Discovered Data
  • Converting Unmanaged Devices to Managed Devices
  • Converting Unmanaged Networks to Managed Status
  • Converting Unmanaged Networks under IPAM to Managed Status
  • Converting Unmanaged IP Addresses to Managed Status
  • Converting Unmanaged Assets to Managed Status
• About Automatic Conversion Rules
  • Configuring Automatic Conversion Rules
  • Supported Conversion Parameters
• Viewing Discovered Devices and their Properties
  • Viewing the Complete List of Discovered Devices
  • Viewing Discovered VRFs and Mapping Network Views
• Accessing Detailed Device Information
  • Viewing Interface Information for Discovered Devices
  • Determining Interface Capabilities
  • Viewing Networks Associated with Discovered Devices
  • Modifying Networks
  • Viewing IP Addresses Associated with Discovered Devices
  • Viewing Router Redundancy Information
  • Viewing Assets Associated with Discovered Devices
  • Viewing Components of Discovered and Managed Devices
• Viewing Discovery Status 
  • Analyzing Discovery Status 
• Executing Discovery Diagnostics 
  • Viewing the Management State of IPs in Discovered Networks 
• Disabling Discovery for a Network
• Adding Discovery Device Support
• Port Control Features in Network Insight 
  • About Port Reservations 
• Editing Interfaces in a Device
  • Editing Multiple Interfaces
  • Editing Multiple Interfaces from the Devices Page
  • Inline Interface Editing
• Provisioning and De-Provisioning Networks 
  • De-provisioning Networks
  • Troubleshooting Port Control Tasks 
• Creating Port Reservations for IPAM Objects
  • Editing Port Reservation Settings for IPAM Objects
  • Defining Port Reservations for an Infoblox Grid Member
  • Defining Port Reservations for an HA Pair
  • Editing Port Reservation Settings for an Infoblox Grid Member
  • Defining Device Information
• Defining Blackout Periods
  • Defining Blackout Periods for the Grid
  • Defining Blackout Periods for Networks
• Defining Port Configuration Blackout Periods
  • Defining Port Configuration Blackouts for the Grid
  • Defining Port Configuration Blackouts for Networks
• Conflict Resolution in Network Insight
  • Resolving Port Reservation Conflicts
  • Resolving Multiple Conflicts

About Network Insight
Infoblox Network Insight provides discovery features for detecting and managing devices in your network infrastructure. You can use discovery to collect device data and manage it through Grid Manager. For more information about device management, see Managing Discovered Data.
You can view the operating state of all discovered network infrastructure devices and newly discovered IP networks, including but not limited to routers, firewalls, load balancers, Ethernet L2/L3 switches, end hosts, end host networks, VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding) virtual networks, and single and multipoint VPNs. Network Insight makes it easy to manage and secure your enterprise network by detecting all interfaces for every discovered device and providing specific information about them. For information about discovering VRF virtual networks, see Discovering VRF Virtual Networks.
The Infoblox IPAM feature set also provides control mechanisms by including and excluding networks and IP addresses for discovery. You can schedule and define when discovery takes place on any network, and define blackout periods during which no discovery tasks occur. Infoblox IPAM and DHCP functions also extend network control to assigning of discovered switch and router interfaces to IPAM objects such as IP networks, IP reservations, and host records. The assignments are called port reservations and are part of a feature set called port control, managed through Grid Manager. For more information, see Port Control Features in Network Insight.
Infoblox provides a few reports in which you can view trending information about the device groups, types of devices, and device IP addresses for the devices that are discovered by Network Insight. For information about these reports, see Network Insight Dashboards.