Ask the Expert: Live Chat - Discovery | Troubleshooting and best practices

[vidhya_srinivas]

Welcome to Ask The Expert conversation.

Join Aleck Lin and Amit Dhuleshia as they share with you Discovery troubleshooting and best practices. Each month a common issue encountered by Discovery customers will be addressed. There will be a brief presentation of the issue that covers troubleshooting techniques and design recommendations suggested. The bulk of the session will be an open QA on any Discovery related topic.

Original Air Date: Thursday July 24, 2014: 10 AM PT | 1:00 PM ET

Associated Content

Videos on Troubleshooting a Failed Discovery

• Part 1 of 5: Introduction
• Part 2 of 5: Scanning Phase  
• Part 3 of 5: Classification Phase  
• Part 4 of 5: Identification Phase
• Part 5 of 5: Exploration Phase

[aleck_lin]

Stephen,

Actually, I don't think it would be that bad. Are you hoping to do this in terms of a separate probe/sensor combo? or you want to add it to the SNMP - Identity probe/sensor process? Either way is okay and the addition wouldn't touch any of the existing code.

[StephenHey]

We've added it to the out of box probe/sensor combination so we don't have to reconcile between the already existing probe/sensor combination.   And, although we've done it, the reason to look for an alternative would be that for any upgrade we do, we always have to look at that sensor to make sure Service-now hasn't added any additional functionality to it that would not get updated (skipped file).

That's really the only reason.   What we have works, just wondering if what we did is the best considering it's a trade off between adding complexity of multiple probes/sensors finding the same thing and worrying about future upgrades.

[aleck_lin]

Hi Stephen,

Typically, if it's information Discovery doesn't provide out of the box, then I think it makes sense to create a separate probe/sensor combo in the Exploration phase. If it's something that you have to modify the OOB probe/sensor, then there's not a good way to do that right now without owning that update. Although from your description, it didn't sound like you had to modify the existing probe/sensor to add the serial number. Maybe I can do a session on that next time.

[lileem09]

Question:   Is it bad practice to turn off specific sensors in order to keep software installations from feeding into the system?   We are hesitant to allow this data to load until we decide whether to purchase a data normalization tool, such as BDNA.

[aleck_lin]

Melinda,

It's fine to turn off software probe/sensor. In fact, there's a property in the Discovery Properties page that already allows you to turn off Installed software probes automatically.