HEAT Discovery

HEAT Discovery helps administrators and managers identify IT assets across their organization. As a prerequisite, all devices must communicate using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Based on specific device criteria (FQDN, MAC address, SMBIOS GUID), HEAT Discovery is able to identify computers across all platforms and locations world-wide on the corporate network.

Discovery's LANProbe technology automatically discovers all types of devices on the network such as servers, printers, routers and firewalls.

You can collect detailed information on hardware, operating system, application software and data by deploying Discovery Client Agents on the computers on your company's network. The Client Agents communicate with the Discovery Server via a highly efficient and compressed protocol which has very little effect on the network load.

The LANProbe technology will also alert you to any changes within your IT assets, for example newly added devices, location changes or devices that were removed from the network. Discovery automatically detects whether individual computers return inventory data within a specified interval.

The HEAT Administrator Console can be used to manage all the IT auditing processes. It uses encryption when sending or receiving messages to and from the Client Agent. In turn, the Client Agent conducts a complete inventory and returns the inventory file to the server which analyzes the file and updates the CI data.

HEAT Discovery is accomplished by:

• Performing an Active Directory scan from a HEAT gateway.
• Doing a ping discovery on the IP address ranges using a module called Netscan (included in the data center gateway installation).
• Running a client agent process called LANProbe, that listens for network traffic and then queries devices on the network using SNMP.
• Gathering data via SCCM and other external sources that communicate directly with the asset processor and other adapters.
• Importing information from an external file using the business object uploader.
• Manually entering the data.

After discovery, assets are audited. Auditing of the discovered assets is accomplished by:

• Installing the HEAT agent on the computer to be audited.
• Remotely auditing via a WMI scanner that runs on the HEAT gateway.
• Performing an SCCM import.
• Uploading a file.

A typical Discovery installation consists of the following components:

• HEAT Administrator Console
  HEAT Discovery is integrated in HEAT Service Management and uses the HEAT Administrator Console and the Discovery Manager Dashboard as the user interface where the inventory data is displayed and where inventories are requested and planned. The HEAT Administrator Console sends messages to the Client Agent, e.g. "Request Inventory".
• Gateway
  Gateways allow you to scan your network and create records about the devices and machines. You can install more than one gateway; however, you can only set one gateway as the central gateway. A central gateway allows you to have a single machine that communicates with the main server. All other gateways send information to the central gateway.
• Inventory or Asset Database
  HEAT Discovery is integrated into HEAT Service Management and uses the HEAT DB as the Inventory or Asset Database.
• Discovery Client Agent
  The Client Agent runs on all computers included in the inventory; it conducts the inventory of hardware, software and storage location and sends the results as inventory messages to the server. The Client Agent stores the results of the last inventory and sends "deltas" (i.e. the changes) to the server. The Client Agent also contains the Discovery LANProbe.
  LANProbe discovers further hardware in the same network segment, for example different computers, network routing devices and standalone network printers. The HEAT Administrator Console uses this data to both discover and track the physical location of hardware.