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How to configure and activate the inventory data providers

Overview

The Inventory of Citrix XenServerInventory of Microsoft Hyper-V, and Inventory of VMware vCenter providers enable access to the virtual infrastructure of a data center that uses the corresponding technology. Therefore, you should configure the relevant virtualization data provider.

If you are using the Inventory of VMware vCenter Data Provider, keep in mind that IP addresses of virtual machines will be imported only if they are available in VMware vCenter Server at the time of data import. When a virtual machine is powered off and up to several minutes after it has been powered on, VMware vCenter Server does not provide an IP address of that machine.

 The Windows Inventory and Unix Inventory data providers enable collection of the software and hardware data for computers. Depending on the operating system in use, configure the relevant data provider after all computers of the network have been imported to Matrix42 Software Asset & Service Management by using one of the discovery tools.

ADM_Inventory_Components.png

To check the supported versions and make sure that your virtual infrastructure can be scanned successfully, please refer to the following articles:

Prerequisites for Microsoft Hyper-V Inventory

Prerequisites for VMware vCenter Inventory

Prerequisites for Citrix XenServer Inventory

Prerequisites for Unix inventory

Prerequisites for Windows inventory

For information on required ports, see Ports used by connectors and data providers.

Configuring data providers for virtual infrastructure

For correct operation of the agentless scanning, you should configure a relevant data provider for a specific data gateway and define the computers that should be scanned. Configuration settings for Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vCenter, and Citrix XenServer data providers follow the same logic. Therefore, you should follow the same sequence of steps:

  1. Go to Integration > Data Providers in the Administration application.
  2. Double-click the virtual infrastructure data provider (Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vCenter, or Citrix XenServer) to open it. The properties dialog contains the configurations list where configurations for this provider can be managed.

Add a new configuration and fill in the General and Settings tabs.

General

  1. Specify the Data Gateway instance that will execute the configuration and select the Enable import checkbox to activate this configuration.
  2. Fill in the Login and Password fields to set the credentials for scanning.
  3. Select the Create new computers checkbox to allow creating new computers. If you clear the checkbox, the scanning will only update inventory for the existing computers.
  4. Specify which status will be set for all computers that are imported for the first time in Status for New Computers.
  5. In Status for Deleted Computers specify the status for virtual computers that are no longer found in the specified virtual infrastructure environment. This setting applies only for computers whose management type is Virtual Inventory.
  6. You can also set Period of Initial Motion History Scanning (days). This field is available for inventory of VMware vCenter and inventory of Microsoft Hyper-V data providers. Use it to set the period for which the migration history for virtual machines will be collected when the corresponding configuration is executed for the first time. If the period is not set, the migration history is not collected when the configuration is executed for the first time. Each next time when the configuration is run, only migration history changes that have occurred since the last successful scan are added. These records are displayed on the Devices > Virtualization dialog page of corresponding virtual machines.

VirtualProviderConfig.png

Included Computers/Excluded Computers

Conditions of these dialog pages determine which computers are scanned according to this configuration (included in scanning) and which ones are skipped (excluded from scanning).

  1. Automatically include computers matching following criteria (ASQL)/Automatically exclude computers matching following criteria (ASQL): Set the ASQL expression according to which computers should be filtered. The ASQL expression is based on the SPSAssetClassBase data definition.

Examples:

  • T(SPSComputerClassBase).Name like ‘SRV%’ (All computers where name starts with "SRV")
  • T(SPSComputerClassAD).Domain.DomainName = ‘corp’ (All computers where domain is "corp")
  1. Include following computers/Exclude following computers: Use the Add and Delete buttons to specify the list of relevant target computers manually.

When generating a list of machines to be scanned, the configuration considers both the ASQL expression and explicitly specified computers.

For the virtualization data providers, it is sufficient to specify filtering conditions only for virtualization management servers. As a result, all relevant virtual machines will be scanned as well.

  1. Inventory data providers are enabled to run scans in parallel. Use the Maximum Number of Concurrent Scans field on the Included Computers page to specify the number of concurrent scans.
  2. Save your settings.

You can create several configurations per the same data gateway and data provider. It can be useful if these configurations should use different access credentials or are customized to scan different sets of computers.

Configuring data providers for Windows and Unix inventory

For correct operation of the agentless scanning, you should configure a relevant data provider for a specific data gateway and define the computers that should be scanned:

  1. Go to Integration > Data Providers in the Administration application.
  2. Double-click the device inventory data provider (Windows or Unix) to open it. The properties dialog contains the configurations list where configurations for this provider can be managed.

Add a new configuration and fill in the General and Settings tabs.

General

  1. Specify the Data Gateway instance that will execute the configuration and select the Enable import checkbox to activate this configuration.
  2. Fill in the Login and Password fields to set the credentials for scanning.

You can also configure the Unix Inventory data provider to run with the public key authentication.

 Included Computers/Excluded Computers

Conditions of these dialog pages determine which computers are scanned according to this configuration (included in scanning) and which ones are skipped (excluded from scanning).

  1. Automatically include computers matching following criteria (ASQL)/Automatically exclude computers matching following criteria (ASQL): Set the ASQL expression according to which computers should be filtered. The ASQL expression is based on the SPSAssetClassBase data definition.

Examples:

  • T(SPSComputerClassBase).Name like ‘SRV%’ (All computers where name starts with "SRV")
  • T(SPSComputerClassAD).Domain.DomainName = ‘corp’ (All computers where domain is "corp")
  1. Include following computers/Exclude following computers: Use the Add and Delete buttons to specify the list of relevant target computers manually.

When generating a list of machines to be scanned, the configuration considers both the ASQL expression and explicitly specified computers.

The filtering conditions should be set so that they cover both virtual and physical computers.

  1. Inventory data providers are enabled to run scans in parallel. Use the Maximum Number of Concurrent Scans field on the Included Computers page to specify the number of concurrent scans.
  2. Save your settings.

You can create several configurations per the same data gateway and data provider. It can be useful if these configurations should use different access credentials or are customized to scan different sets of computers.

Using the public key authentication for the Unix data provider

For the Unix Inventory data provider, you can also configure the public key authentication settings. If you want to use public key authentication, select the Use public key authentication checkbox and fill in Login and Private Key. The Password Phrase is optional and only required, when the key was generated with a passphrase.  Provide the value for the Private Key field.  

Example: How to generate SSH keys

The latest SSH.NET 2020.0.1 supports the OpenSSH format for ssh-ed25519 keys only.

  1. Connect to a Linux System to generate the keys using ssh-keygen.
  2. Run the following commands :
  • ssh-keygen -t ed25519
    # ssh-keygen will prompt for the location where the key pair should be stored and after that generate the EdDSA key pair with 255 bit size.

You can define a passphrase or leave it empty.

  • ssh-copy-id -i <path _name_public _key> user@host
    # will add the public key to the authorized_keys file on the specified host for the specified user.

 Activating the import

Run the Enable action for the data provider and then click Activate to start the import immediately.

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