Discovery with a New NetMRI Deployment

Сomplete the following procedure to perform your first network discovery:

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 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 the odds of finding devices. The seed router might be, for example, the router to which NetMRI first connects for the discovery of the network. For more information, see the sections Configuring Discovery Ranges, Specifying Static IPs, Adding Seed Routers, 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. The 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.
   
   

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, 30804657Interfaces, and Configuring VRF-Aware Device Interfaces.

The following table summarizes both migrated and new installations (steps 6-9 are common to both procedures):