Discovering Your Enterprise › Discovering IPv6 Network Devices using Common Discovery

Discovering IPv6 Network Devices using Common Discovery

Continuous and Classic Discovery do not have the ability to discover or recognize devices on IPv6 networks. To discover devices on IPv6 networks in your enterprise, you must use Common Discovery, which is a discovery product that is capable of discovering and classifying all devices on IPv6 and IPv4 networks. You can install Common Discovery from the Unicenter Product Explorer.

Note: Common Discovery can discover only IPv6 devices for CA NSM.

Common Discovery Import is a WorldView service that populates the MDB with an IPv6 topology. IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the latest protocol for IP addresses. It supports longer addresses than IPv4, with a size increase from 32 bits to 128 bits.

Note: CA Common Discovery is not integrated with the CA NSM database and is therefore not notified about a new class. Also, the dscvrbe command, which starts Classic Discovery, does not apply. Instead, CA NSM gets data from CA Common Discovery itself. To add a class, you must manually update the rule classification file (CmnDscvrClassification.xml) in the CACD\Config directory. Its format is similar to the CA NSM rules file.

You use the Common Discovery Import service to populate the MDB with an IPv6 topology containing IPv6 network devices discovered by Common Discovery.

Common Discovery

CA Common Discovery is a subsystem that provides the discovery and classification of all entities in your Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) or Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) network. It discovers the relationships between these entities and effectively records the network's topology.

CA Common Discovery includes the following components:

Discovery User Interface

Provides the services to support an administration user interface thin client. The Apache Tomcat web service must be previously installed on the computer. The installation prompts for the Tomcat installation path, discovery server name, and port number.

You can install multiple Discovery UI components that point to a single Common Discovery server component.

Discovery Server

Provides a central point for storing and querying Discovery data, options, policies, and log data. The server includes a single instance of the discovery agent. You must install at least one discovery server in a CA Common Discovery installation. Large environments can install multiple discovery servers as they are needed, but it is not necessary to have multiple discovery servers. Several CA products can share the same discovery server. The installation prompts for the discovery server port number.

Installation includes the following discovery server subcomponents:

• Request Manager
• Database (DB) Manager
• Log Manager
• Enterprise Common Services Installation

Note: It is not necessary to have multiple Discovery Servers. You can share a single Discovery Server across multiple CA products.

Discovery Agent

Provides discovery data gathering. CA Common Discovery installs at least one discovery agent with a discovery server in a CA Common Discovery installation. Multiple agents can be installed at strategic locations on the network to gather data and communicate it back to the discovery server. After installation, the agent service starts automatically. It also registers itself with the discovery server. The agent registration process adds the agent to the discovery server's agent list. The server returns a set of default agent options. The installation prompts you for the discovery server name.

Installation includes the following discovery agent subcomponents:

• Request Agent
• Discovery Engines
• Enterprise Common Services Installation

Discovery Web Client

The web client is a thin client that depends on centrally installed UI Discovery Request Client Servlets. Web clients are used to administer Discovery policies and options.

Note: For any Common Discovery deployment, there will be any number of web clients.

Discovery Request Client

Discovery Request Clients leverage exposed SOAP methods that provide remote access to the Common Discovery Server. The SOAP infrastructure ensures these methods are available to any C/C++ and Java applications. Consumer applications must integrate with Common Discovery by making calls to a C/C++ or Java Discovery Request Client as appropriate in order to retrieve the discovered entities. The consuming application may also choose to integrate with the Discovery Request Client in order to dynamically invoke a discovery.

The Common Discovery installation provides UI component that consists of Java Servlets that invoke the Java Discovery Request Client.

• Large, dispersed environments may install multiple Common Discovery UI components as per customer needs.
• Multiple UI components are not a requirement. In fact, a single UI component may be shared across multiple CA products.

Note: For any Common Discovery deployment, there must are at least two installed Discovery Request Clients - one that is specific to the consumer application and the other that consists of the Common Discovery Java Servlets for supporting its web clients.