JDisc Discovery#

JDisc Discovery makes an inventory of whole networks and recognizes all important operating systems (including HP-UX, Solaris and AIX). It recognizes hardware and software, IP networks, Windows domains and Active Directory. In addition, JDisc Discovery identifies all important virtualization technologies, as well as many cluster environments.

Installation#

The installation of JDisc server components on a Microsoft Windows system (preferably the server version) is required for its operation. The necessary installation files can be downloaded via the following web address:

http://www.jdisc.com/en/downloads.html

During the setup you will be asked which passwords are to be used for the PostgreSQL-DBMS, which is applied in the background. This concerns the administrative account postgres and the account postgresro, which only has read permission for the JDisc database. The latter account is required for the interface to i-doit. Besides, with the setup you have to specify that the PostgreSQL instance should be accessible to the outside. As a default, it observes port 25321. You have to activate the port in the Windows firewall.

Should you have questions regarding the installation or configuration of JDisc, contact the manufacturer's customer support:

http://www.jdisc.com/en/support.html

This article addresses the interface between i-doit and JDisc Discovery.

Configuration#

The configuration of the interface is under Administration → Interfaces / external data → Import → JDISC → JDisc configuration. You can define any number of instances of JDisc Discovery. This allows complex inventory scenarios with separated networks.

Common Settings#

After the parameters are saved, you can test the connection to the JDisc database with the Check connection button.

Discovery Settings#

The user can activate a scan with the configured JDisc instance with i-doit. For this purpose, the JDisc Discovery web service is used, provided it is installed and activated.

After saving the parameters, you can test whether the configuration was successful with the Check connection button.

The PHP extension SOAP has to be installed on the i-doit host so that the connection to JDisc Discovery works. With a Debian-based operating system you already have this extension by having installed PHP. It is very likely that there are suitable distribution packets for other operating systems.

Profiles#

The JDisc profiles of i-doit provide the possibility to define the connection of object types and their attributes between JDisc and i-doit. Under Administration → Interfaces / external data → Import → JDISC → JDisc profiles you can specify how the objects found by JDisc find their way into the IT documentation.

The i-doit default installation already provides predefined profiles. Among these predefined profiles is the Complete import profile which has the purpose to import all data in i-doit which have been inventoried by JDisc.

General Configuration#

Object-type Assignment#

For each type in JDisc you can select an equivalent object type in i-doit. If none is selected, devices of this type will not be imported. The order of allocations is observed during import. In order to identify an allocation, the list is processed from top to bottom. For each line the matrix has the following structure:

Additional Options#

Import of Data via the Web GUI#

The import of data contents from JDisc is carried out via Extras → CMDB → Import → JDisc.

Before you execute the import process, you have to define the import parameters.

Because it is possible to apply more than one JDisc server, you have to select the JDisc server in the first step. The profile which you defined beforehand can be also selected to influence the imported contents and their use. In addition, you can set the import mode. The Append import mode creates all found objects without checking whether these already exist. The Update import mode creates only objects which can not be found in the i-doit database. Categories of already existing objects are complemented (if necessary) with new data. The Overwrite import mode is, in principle, like the Update mode but with the difference that list categories are emptied first and are then recreated.

With the logging function you can influence the extent of the written log. A more extensive logging increases the import duration.

When you carried out the settings completely, you can activate the import with Start the import. Please, consider that the duration of the import process depends both on the size of the JDisc database and the utilized hardware.

When the import process is completed, a summary is displayed in the Result section.

You can find the logs which are generated during import in the i-doit directory called log/.

Import via JDisc Discovery category#

You can update individual objects using the JDisc Discovery category. Here it is possible to scan the device using a specific identification (host address, FQDN and serial number).

You can add the category via the object type configuration of the object type.

Import via i-doit Console#

Importing data from JDisc to i-doit is not only possible manually via the user interface. It can also be executed via the i-doit Console and thus automated. How the corresponding call is generated can be found in the corresponding article with an example for the import-jdisc option.

For the import, the ID of the desired profile can be specified. The ID can be found in the list of profiles:

Also the ID of the JDisc server to be used can be specified. This can be found in the configuration:

A jdisc.ini might look like this more information about .ini files can be found here.

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13

[commandArguments]
[commandOptions]
user=admin
password=admin
tenantId=6
profile=1
group=
mode=1
server=2
overwriteHost
detailedLogging=3
regenerateSearchIndex
[additional]

If we assume that the jdisc.ini is located in the i-doit root directory, then the import is called with the ldap.ini from the i-doit root directory like this:

1

sudo -u www-data php console.php import-jdisc -c jdisc.ini