How to Discover Your Virtual Environment

Configure CAM Discovery to discover any virtual machines on your network. First configure virtual environment discovery, then run discovery.

Configure Virtual Environment Discovery

To configure virtual environment discovery:

  1. Select Tools > Discover > Virtual Environment.
  2. Select Configure.
  3. Select Add to enter information about where to look for virtual machines.
  4. Select an option:
    1. To query a range of IP addresses, select IP Address Range.
      • Enter the start and end IP addresses for the range, then proceed to step 5.
    2. To query a specific subnet on your network, select Subnet.
      • Enter the subnet address and mask to query, then proceed to step 5.
    3. If you know the name or IP address of the machine(s) you want to query, select Machine.
      1. Enter the IP address or name of the machine(s) to query, or select Browse to find machines to query.
      2. Proceed to step 5.
  5. In the VM platform drop-down list, select Hyper-V or VMware.
  6. For the option you selected in step 4, enter the Virtual Environment Credentials for the virtual machine.
  7. Select Test Virtual Credentials to test the connection.
    1. Select Test to verify that a connection can be established.
  8. Guest users can use either the same credentials as the virtual environment, or separate credentials for guests that have WMI access:
    1. If you want guests to be able to use the virtual environment credentials to log in to the VM, select the Use virtual environment credentials for guests check box.
    2. If you don't want to allow guests to log in with virtual environment credentials, do not check the box, and enter the guest WMI credentials (User name and Password). For more information about guest credentials and WMI access, see Requirements in About Virtual Environment Discovery.
    3. Select Test Guest Credentials to test the connection.
    4. Select Test to verify that a connection can be established.
  9. Select OK to save your configuration and return to the Configure Virtual Environment Discovery dialog box. The check box for the configuration you just entered is selected, which means those machines are queried the next time you run discovery or scheduled discovery runs.
    If you are configuring an IP address range or subnet, a dialog box opens to tell you how many IP addresses this configuration will attempt to query. Select Yes to save your configuration or, if the number of machines is not what you expect, select No to return to the dialog box and make changes. Although querying a large number of machines can take some time, it does not affect machine performance or the ability to run other tasks.
  10. Repeat steps 3 – 9 for any additional discovery configurations you want to add.
  11. Select the check boxes next to configurations on which you want to run discovery.
    • To run discovery on all of your configurations, select Check All.

      - or -

    • Clear all configurations by selecting Uncheck All, then select the check boxes next to the individual configurations on which you want to run discovery.
  12. Select OK to return to the Discover Virtual Environment dialog box. Virtual environment discovery configuration is now complete and available to run, as described next.

Run Virtual Environment Discovery

You can run virtual environment discovery immediately after configuration, or later:
  • To run virtual machine discovery immediately, select Discover.
  • To run it later, select Close. You can return to this dialog box any time you want to run virtual machine discovery:
    • Select Tools > Discover > Virtual Environment > Discover.

The options you specified during configuration remain in effect until you change them.

Tips:

  • Once virtual environment discovery is complete, press F5 or select View > Refresh to view the discovered virtual machines.
  • Once configured, the virtual machine discovery process automatically runs at 1:30 AM each Sunday by default.
    • To turn off this scheduled task, select Options > Schedule.
  • Change how frequently discovery runs through the Windows Task Scheduler. Select Virtual Machine Discovery Task, then select the Cherwell Asset Management node.