Actions automatically performed by NetCrunch when scanning your network

Instead of manually adding devices to be monitored, NetCrunch scans the network, identifies devices, and automatically configures their monitoring. See what is configured and what is monitored out-of-the-box when you first install NetCrunch.

Defining the scope of network scan

If you are responsible for part of the company network or only a certain type of devices, you can limit what NetCrunch adds to the network atlas by defining what you are interested in. To do so, you can select networks and AD containers that will be scanned and added to the new Atlas. You can also choose between scanning for all types of devices, infrastructure devices only or devices that match SNMP filter

Discovering of SNMP

NetCrunch can automatically detect that the device uses the SNMP protocol. It can also detect which version of SNMP is configured on the device. NetCrunch supports SNMP v1, 2 and 3. It has default profiles defined that you can use to monitor your devices. However, if you have other SNMP profiles that you have created for specific groups or types of SNMP devices, it is recommended that you enter these profiles into NetCrunch before you start scanning the network.

Discovering of Network Services

NetCrunch recognizes 70 different network services out of the box. By default, NetCrunch is set to discover the most popular 13 of them, such as PING, FTP, LDAP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, DNS. You can, of course, easily select and add other Network Services' to be monitored, or, if needed, you can create your own Custom Service definitions.

Discovering of Device types

NetCrunch is able to discover various device types, including (but not limited to):

• Servers/Workstations
• Hardware Routers
• Firewalls
• Switches
• Printers
• Cameras
• UPSes

There are over 1350 device types predefined in NetCrunch, which means they are recognized automatically. However, in the case when NetCrunch does not detect your device type - it's easy to add new definition manually.

Discovering of OS systems

NetCrunch automatically discovers several operating systems including (but not limited to):

• Windows (Server 2000 - 2019, Workstation 95 - 10)
• Linux (CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and others)
• MacOS
• ESX/ESXi (1 - 6)
• Solaris
• BSD (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD)
• Citrix (3.1 - 7.1)

It is enough for the user to add the machine to NetCrunch (a single machine or the whole network) and provide correct credentials. The program will automatically recognize the operating systems and will monitor it.

NetCrunch is able to recognize if a machine is virtual and on which host it is located. If the machine has IP, it would be done automatically after providing correct credentials. Additionally, there is a Create nodes for guests option on the host. You can find it in Node Settings. When this option is selected, NeCrunch will automatically add to the atlas all new nodes which will appear on the given host.

Automatic Monitoring Packs

There are around 50 Automatic Monitoring Packs. By 'automatic' we mean that they are automatically assigned to nodes that meet specific filtering conditions, e.g. Operating System = Windows, device type = Dell, etc. Thanks to this, you don't have to worry about manually adding metrics and parameters to be monitored. NetCrunch will do it for you. Of course, NetCrunch includes even more Manual Monitoring Packs. It means that if you want to monitor some metrics/parameters, you need to add nodes to the Monitoring Packs manually. You can also create your own (Automatic and Manual) Monitoring Packs if you want, or edit the existing Monitoring Pack and modify it for your purposes - for example, have different Monitoring Pack for production Windows Server and test/lab Windows Server.

Example Automatic Monitoring Packs:

• Active Directory
• Hyper-V Hypervisor
• Hyper-V/VM
• DNS Server
• Network Traffic

Here you can check a full list of Monitoring Packs. We are adding new packs with every NetCrunch release.