XML Discovery

Traditionally, discovery has been comprised primarily of an IP scan of network devices. Through the use of certain monitoring protocols (SNMP, ICMP, WMI, etc.), basic information can be extracted in order to provide a generic overview of your inventory along with its status according to predetermined KPIs. A scattered system of separate modules, the software clumsily attempts to extract this data and implement it as the foundation for fault and performance management, configuration functionalities and alarm notifications. A machine- and human-readable program language, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) does not replace monitoring protocols in discovery. Instead, if these protocols are thought of as the eyes of discovery, XML is the brain that tells them what to look at and how to organize what they see. Vision, however, is but one of many senses the brain can use to understand it’s world. Through the use of tags in XML, there is a fundamental enrichment of the kinds of information that can be extracted and organized. It provides a template for future automated discoveries that give meaningful insight and builds a logic to help your network management software work for you.