Program start, logon, and adding nodes

After launching OTbase Discovery Manager, you are prompted to log on.

OTbase Discovery Manager has no access credentials in its own right. Hence, you could cancel the logon dialog and still use the program. However in this case you will only be able to see and modify the list of nodes that are subject to management.

The credentials that you provide logon are passed to remote Asset Discovery nodes in order to retrieve status data. They will also allow you to remotely configure nodes.

Adding nodes in dialog mode

No matter if you supplied login credentials or not, you can add Asset Discovery nodes by clicking on the "Add" button. Thereafter, a dialog box opens which allows you to specify a hostname or IP address. You can also specify a non-standard port number for the new node, if it shouldn't match the default port number.

If not logged in, adding Asset Discovery nodes will allow you to fill the node table, but no connection attempt will be made. In this case, you will only see host names or IP addresses in the first column. Information in other columns will only be inserted when connecting to the respective Asset Discovery nodes.

Adding nodes as a file

Node data is automatically saved in a text file in the CSV (comma-separated values) format. This file is stored in C:\ProgramData\Langner\OT-BASE Discovery Manager\ot-base-discovery-manager.txt.

If you prefer, you can input node data in this file, rather than in Discovery Manager's user interface. The format is as follows:

host, port number, [node name, node location ID, node SW version, scheduled probe time, date/time of last export, status]

Data within square brackets will be inserted by Discovery Manager. If you want to manually fill the configuration file, or semi-automatically -- for example, using data from OTbase Asset Center --, you only need to fill the first field (hostname or IP address). If you don't supply a port number, the default port number that you have configured during installation of Discovery Manager will be used.

In the interest of avoiding duplicate labor, you would produce a comprehensive configuration file only once, and then share it with other users of Discovery Manager.

Re-login

The Re-login button in the main menu bar can be used in situations where your Asset Discovery nodes use diverse access credentials, for whatever reason. In this situation, you can work on one set of nodes with your initial access credentials, then re-login using different credentials to manage other nodes.