One of Netreo’s hallmark features is automated device discovery, onboarding and configuration. When you first fire up Netreo, it searches your entire infrastructure to identify and add devices for your monitoring needs. When properly orchestrated – that is, you provide enough detail on device location and monitoring needs in advance – devices get properly grouped and added to dashboards and reports, as well your Device Management page, alerting parameters, thresholding controls and alerting rules within Netreo.
The same process continues whenever new devices are added to your infrastructure. And like any monitoring tool, devices can also be added manually, plus via a few other means.
In this post, Netreo Director, Engineering Operations Brian Olsen covers troubleshooting issues you may experience when devices are not properly added. Troubleshooting methods apply to all device addition processes (import, API, Virtual Environments, CMDB, Manual Add, etc.)
Before starting, be sure to have the following details available:
Check the Device Management Page to look for clues as to why the device has not been added properly. The Device Management Screen visualizes the flow that devices take during the onboarding process. Here you’ll see information about the devices discovered in the environment, their status in onboarding and the validation status.
The Device Management screen is available under the global Administration / Device Management menu item:
When Netreo learns or discovers a new device, it puts those devices into an interrogation table within our database. The system then executes processes to determine if the device can, or should, be managed.
Be sure to confirm these requirements by following the “Testing Connectivity” and “Credential Testing” before moving on with the Device Management Screen for troubleshooting devices.
The Interrogation table will show the different statuses that devices can be flagged as during the addition process, along with the number of devices that have been set with the different statuses.
Using the IP address or addresses of the device or devices in question, click on each of the status fields. Clicking on one of the status fields will provide a list of the devices set with that particular status:
The above screenshot displays the list of devices flagged as failed. This list shows the IP addresses of the devices that have been discovered but have failed to be added. Search the list for the IP address or addresses of the device or devices in question.
After going through each of the lists and searching for the IP addresses, follow these steps, depending on which status table contains the relevant addresses.
If the name matches a filter, all should be well
When the device name does not match, continue troubleshooting devices
If a duplicate IP address, or the IP address or addresses are not present in any of the status lists, you should contact Network Support Services.
Please note: in order for devices to be added as a managed object, the Netreo Instance or Service Engine must be able to reach that device, as well as successfully query the device for statistics.
To make sure that the device is reachable by Netreo, test connectivity to the device from your Netreo instance.
To test connectivity, you can use the Credential and Connectivity Test tool. Navigate to Administration -> Tools -> Credential and Connectivity Test.
By testing credentials, users are able to identify whether the credentials applied to the device in question are functioning properly and determine if access methods are blocked in some way. Troubleshooting credentials is always the best place to start, because it’s relatively easy compared to finding other issues that could be causing the error.
Navigate to a device’s Overview page where you can click the gear symbol to go to the Admin page. Scrolling to the bottom of the Admin page, you will see the credential fields.
If a field has a lock symbol, then it does have credentials applied from a template in that field. To confirm which template was used, simply hover your cursor over the field and the template will be displayed. It’s a good idea to hover over each field to double check that all are correct.
Fields may also have credentials filled in that are not locked from a device template. Two things to keep in mind at this step:
To authenticate the device in question, go to Administration -> Tools -> Arbitrary Credentials Test. From here, try and make a connection to SNMP/SSH/Windows Powershell to an endpoint. The Arbitrary Credentials Tool gives a more specific response than the Test SNMP or Test WMI option. SNMP and WMI devices will respond with the Name of the device if it was successful. SSH devices will respond by attempting to run an echo “hello world” command.
In the tool, provide the IP address of a sample device and fill in the credentials manually or select a template to use. You can also use a specific Service Engine if there is one that is expected to have access.
If you get an authentication failure, you’ll need to test the local password.
If all of the above widgets are normal, move onto checking your Audit and Debug Log, which will show additional information that could help provide clues when a device fails to be added and why. Refer to our recent How To: Troubleshooting Alarms Not Recovering for how these logs can help.
Following these steps should identify the cause of devices not being added properly to your Netreo Instance. Many experienced Netreo users will know how to use this information to correct the issue. However, please never hesitate to contact Netreo Support Services whenever you encounter challenges when troubleshooting devices on your own, or any other issue you have.
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