NetMRI requires a connection to each network you want to directly discover, manage or control. Scan Interfaces are the ports on NetMRI appliances and virtual appliances that perform this function. Physical scan interfaces are actual Ethernet ports on the appliance.

You can configure virtual scan interfaces on Collector appliances, that use 802.1Q VLAN tagging between NetMRI and its connecting device, to exchange traffic for multiple networks across a single physical interface. To use virtual scan interfaces, you connect one of NetMRI's physical scan interfaces to a device interface configured to route the desired networks with 802.1Q VLAN tags.

You define physical scan interfaces and virtual scan interfaces on Operations Center Collectors. All scan interfaces of either type must be bound to a network view to enable network management across each interface.

Each network view also requires discovery settings to discover the network.

Network Views and Scan Interfaces

You associate all network discovery settings, including discovery ranges, static IPs, and seed routers, with each network view. For information about configuring your network views, see Configuring Network Views and Configuring Network Discovery Settings.

You use network views in combination with scan interfaces to separate and manage networks. If you plan to manage a number of networks of any kind (routed networks, virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) networks, and so on), network views, each tied to a scan interface, give you the flexibility to do so.

Network views provide the useful concept of isolation. Using network views, NetMRI enables you to manage networks that may have overlapping IP prefixes or address ranges, preventing addressing conflicts between separately managed networks. You manage every network in complete isolation from other networks.

In previous Operations Center software versions, a model termed the multi-tenancy multi-collector deployment enables either of the following:

•   Multiple collectors on a single network (for managing an exceptionally large network).

For an OC deployment of this type, choose the network view-collector entry from the Network View list. You can see multiple entries in the pages under the Settings icon > Setup > DiscoverySettings for the NetworkView list. The entire network is assigned to a single network view. However, each network view entry is identified through the association with each Collector. This allows you to edit discovery settings for each Collector in the same network view. Examples:

corp100_west (NM35)

copr100_west (NM36)

Here each Collector, NM35 and NM36, is associated with the same network view, but discovery settings can be edited separately.

• Multiple networks, each assigned to one collector.

This is the multi-network model. Each Collector is assigned to its own separate network view, which is bound to the scan interface on each Collector. Any Collector can also manage through multiple network views, each of which is considered a separate routing domain.

Through virtual scan interfaces and multiple scan ports, combined with network views, you may have multiple scan interfaces per collector, and therefore multiple networks per collector. This extends the multi-tenancy multi-collector model to allow each collector in the Operations Center to flexibly discover, catalog, and manage multiple networks.

Configuring Scan Interfaces on Collectors

On each Collector appliance, each network view can be associated with a single scan interface. Multiple Collectors can each access the same network view, each using separate discovery settings.

For information on configuring physical and virtual scan interfaces, see Configuring Scan Interfaces.