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Configuring your GoToManage® Crawler

You can modify your Crawler configuration any time. The information provided in the configuration setup is crucial for the Crawler to provide you with meaningful data about your network.

Reconfiguring your Crawler Editing Crawler credentials Testing Windows credentials Plugin configurations

 

Reconfiguring your GoToManage Crawler

To reconfigure your GoToManage Crawler:

1. In the lower right corner of the Status bar, click the GoToManage Crawler icon, and then click Configure Crawler.





In GoToManage Configuration, you can reconfigure your GoToManage Crawler for optimum performance in the following ways:

• Service tab
• Credentials tab
• Network tab
• Account tab
• Updates tab
• Tools tab
2. Click OK to save and exit.

 

Service tab

On the Service tab, you can manually stop and start the Crawler service. You can also set the performance of the Crawler in this tab.

To Stop the Crawler service, click on the Stop button. To start the Crawler service, click on the Start button.

You can manage the performance of the Crawler by setting the crawling speed, which causes the Crawler to probe more devices more frequently. The Crawler uses separate processes, rather than separate threads, to perform different actions in parallel. By using separate processes, reliability is increased, but more RAM is used. It is normal to see between 8-25 Crawler processes on the system that hosts your Crawler.

Note: The default value is 7. Do not adjust this value unless you require the Crawler to increase it's speed. Increasing Crawler speed uses more RAM.

 

Credentials tab

On the Credentials tab, you can set or reset the information that the Crawler uses to see where your discovered devices are located. The Crawler also uses the Windows credential to gather data from your Active Directory and LDAP servers. The Crawler uses the SNMP, SSH, and Telnet connections to see the devices connected to switches and routers on your network. If you use a connection among a number of devices, you can add it here. If you use more than one connection, the GoToManage Crawler will try them all:

This account information is encrypted on the system on which the Crawler is hosted, and is not sent to the GoToManage servers. These credentials are required for the Crawler to properly access and gather your network information. Each credential type requires a separate configuration.

To configure a credential:

1. Click Add to configure a credential:

   

2. Provide the following information:

• Name: Enter a name for this credential so you can identify it later.

• Protocol: Select one of the following protocols:

  • Windows/WMI
  • SNMP
  • SSH (for Unix and OSX)
  • Amazon Web Services
  • VMWare ESXi or Virtual Center

  

• Login: Enter the account username using the following format: DOMAIN\username. For a workgroup login, the DOMAIN can be omitted.

• Password: Enter the password for this account.

• Test Credential: Click Test to verify that the account and password information are correct. Enter the DNS name or IP address to test the credentials against, as shown below, and click Test to begin. Any messages will be displayed in the Results window.

  

• Limit Credential Use: In the Choose a Device or Network window, you can indicate which devices the Crawler will probe. You can limit the networks, devices or groups the Crawler should access by listing them here:

  

 

Network tab

On the Networks tab, you can add networks for the Crawler to scan, and choose the network adapter and IP address that your Crawler uses when it scans your network. By default, the Crawler scans only the network that it is directly attached to. You can scan additional networks by adding them here using CIDR notation. The Crawler then scans its own network, plus the networks you added:

Provide the following information:

• Adapter: If the Crawler sees more than one adapter, select the adapter from the pull-down list.
• IP Address: If the Crawler sees more than one IP address, indicate the IP address of the adapter you want Crawler to use.
• Add — Click to add the IP address of the network using CIDR notation, such as 192.168.1.0/24.
  Note: If you look in in the crawler.conf file, you see only the networks that you added, not the default network.
• Delete — Click a network in the list, then click Delete to remove the network from the list.

 

Account tab

On the Account tab, you can access your Company Data Key. If you have more than one company, you can direct your Crawler to collect data about one of them by entering its Company Data Key in this field, from its corresponding Account page: GoToManage uses the data key to associate data from the Crawler with your company data on the GoToManage server. The data key helps keep your data secure, private, and under your control:

To access your Company Data Key, click the Company Settings link. If you are running multiple Crawlers and you want the data consolidated in one account, use the same Data Key for each Crawler.

 

Updates tab

The Updates tab is set by default to check for updates automatically upon startup:

To check for the latest version of the Crawler software, click Check for Updates Now. To prevent the Crawler from checking for updates automatically, check the Don't automatically install updates when available checkbox.

 

Tools tab

On the Tools tab, you can indicate the scan device, and start scans manually:

Select this tab if you want to scan for a new device on your network. You can manually enter the DNS name or IP address of the device and click on the Scan Now button.

If you want the Crawler to look for new devices on your entire network, then click on the Rescan button. The GoToManage Crawler automatically scans the network once a day, but you can also manually perform this task by using this feature.

 

Adding or editing credentials

Enter the default SNMP, Telnet, and/or SSH credentials for your Crawler to log in to the switches and routers it discovers on your network:

• SNMP credentials
• Telnet credentials
• SSH credentials

 

Editing SNMP credentials

To change the SNMP credentials:

1. Credential Name — Type an optional name to identify this credential.
2. Communication Type — From the pull-down list, select SNMP.
3. Read Community String — Indicate public or private, or for SSH and telnet switches, indicate the username and password.

 

Editing Telnet credentials

To change the Telnet credentials:

1. Credential Name — Type an optional name to identify this credential.
2. Communication Type — From the pull-down list, select Telnet.
3. Username — Type the user name.
4. Password — Enter the password and again to confirm.
5. Enable Password — Enter the password and again to confirm.

 

Editing SSH credentials

To enable your Crawler to gather data from Unix machines, the Crawler needs a secure SSH connection to communicate with the Unix machines. You can set this connection in your Crawler Configuration dialog. All fields are required except the Credential Name, and under most circumstances, the Enable Password.

To set the SSH credentials:

1. Credential Name — Type an optional name to identify this credential.
2. Communication Type — From the pull-down list, select SSH.
3. Username — Type the user name.
4. Password — Enter the password and again to confirm.
5. Enable Password — Enter the password and again to confirm.

Note: In most cases you usually don't need an Enable Password unless you want your Crawler to collect data that requires administrator privileges. For example, if you write your own APIs that gather statistics that require administrative rights, you'll need to use enable mode.

 

Testing Windows credentials

To verify the Windows credentials:

1. On the Windows credentials tab, provide all required information.
2. Click the Test button.
3. In the Enter Host or IP Address box, type the IP address or host name of the system that you want to test.



4. After a brief wait, GoToManage returns a message that indicates success or failure:

 

About CIDR Notation

CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) is a way to make more efficient use of scarce IP addresses. Add a suffix to an IP address to indicate the number of bits in it. For example, for a network address/netmask of 172.16.0.0/255.255.255.192.0, the CIDR format would be 172.16.0.0/18.

To convert the netmask to CIDR notation, first convert the netmask to binary, and then add up the number of ones. For example, for a netmask of 255.255.192.0, the first 255 segment in binary is written as 11111111, which has eight ones. Do the same for each segment, then total the number of ones as follows:

Netmask	Binary	Ones
255	11111111	8
255	11111111	8
192	11000000	2
0	0	0
	Total:	18

Examples: Common subnet masks translate as follows:

Class A subnet	10.0.0.0/8
Class B subnet	172.16.0.0/16
Class C subnet	192.168.1.0/24
Single host	192.168.1.1/32

 

Plugin configurations

Your Crawler is only as good as your configuration. This table tells you what to configure for each plugin to work optimally. For example, if you do not provide Windows credentials, many of the plugins will not have enough information to do their job.

This plugin:	Requires this configuration:
Directory Server	IP address of your Directory server Windows Credentials
Microsoft Exchange Information	Windows Credentials
SNMP Interface Statistics	IP address or hostname of switches, routers, and other hosts SNMP credentials
Registry Information	Windows Credentials
Remote Commands	SSH credentials
Switch Harvester	SNMP, SSH, and/or Telnet credentials
SNMP Harvester	SNMP credentials
WMI Information	Windows Credentials
Rescan Hosts	IP address or hostname of device to scan more often Frequency of scans
Searchable Folder	Path to folder