About Discovery Data Collection
Discovery Data Collection is required to obtain detailed information from discovered elements. Discovery Data Collection must be performed before you can do provisioning and/or obtain provisioning information, such as data about zone sets and LUN numbers.
Keep in mind the following:
•Running Discovery Data Collection takes time. You might want to perform this process when the network and the managed elements are not busy.
•Reports show data from the last successful Discovery Data Collection and report cache update. When a scheduled Discovery Data Collection finishes, the report cache refreshes automatically. If you run Discovery Data Collection manually, the report cache updates every 6 hours. For information about refreshing the report cache, see the User Guide.
•During Discovery Data Collection the data you see in the user interface is not updated until the data collection is finished.
•During Discovery Data Collection, the topology in System Manager is recalculated. While the topology is being recalculated, the loading of the user interface in Storage Essentials may be slow. See”Recalculating the Topology” on page 414for more information.
•You can use discovery groups to break up Discovery Data Collection. For example, instead of running Discovery Data Collection for all elements, you could specify only the elements in Discovery Group 1. For more information, see ”Using Discovery Groups” on page 162.
•When an element in a discovery group is updated, its dependent elements are also updated.
•You can quarantine elements to exclude them from Discovery Data Collection. For example, if you want to get information about all the elements in a discovery group except for one, you can quarantine that element. For more information, see ”Placing an Element in Quarantine” on page 166.
•If a problem occurs with a host or
•If you want to receive status reports about Discovery Data Collection, see ”Configuring
•If an element changes and you run Discovery Data Collection while the provider cache is updating, an error might occur or the gathered details might be inconsistent with the actual element status.
Running Discovery Data Collection
To obtain details about the elements on the network:
1.Select Options > Storage Essentials > Discovery > Run Discovery Data Collection.
2.Select Include infrastructure details, which gathers the latest information about SAN details. You do not need to select Include backup details unless you have already discovered hosts running backup applications and installed CIM extensions on those hosts. For information about
154 Discovering Switches, Storage Systems, NAS Devices, and Tape Libraries