NinjaOne NMS: Network Discovery

Topic

This article describes how to use the Network Discovery utility to detect and manage networked devices in your organization.

Environment

NinjaOne Network Management System (NMS)

Description

This utility replaces the legacy Network Management System (NMS) download and installer. You can perform network discovery directly from the NinjaOne platform. Network Discovery scans your IP ranges for active devices, profiles them using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and other protocols, and adds them to NinjaOne for ongoing monitoring and management. You can run discovery on demand or on a scheduled basis, making it suitable for both initial network onboarding and continuous inventory maintenance. Before deploying the NMS delegate, ensure your environment meets the system requirements described in the linked article below.

Refer to our NinjaOne NMS System Requirements article before installing the NMS delegate.

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Index

Select a topic to continue:

• NMS Delegate Architecture
• Configuring Network Discovery
• Running and Saving Network Discovery
  • Running a Network Discovery Job
  • Saving and Scheduling a Network Job
  • Viewing Saved Network Discovery Jobs
  • Editing Saved Jobs
  • Viewing Network Discovery Job History
  • Re-running Historical Network Jobs
  • Saving Historical Network Jobs
  • Viewing Job Instances From the Job History Tab
  • Claiming Ownership of a Network Discovery Job
  • Applying Ping Conditions Through Advanced Settings
  • Advanced Settings Explained
• Adding Discovered Devices to Your Organization
• Assigning Device Roles to Discovered Devices

NMS Delegate Architecture

Refer to Figure 1 for an overview of the NinjaOne NMS architecture, and note the following points:

• To use NinjaOne's network management suite, deploy the NinjaOne NMS Delegate separately for every customer whose SNMP-capable devices you want to monitor.
• The NMS Delegate is a separate installation from the NinjaOne monitoring agent, but you can install both agents in parallel. The NMS Delegate performs network discovery (manually) and adds the associated devices to NinjaOne.

Configuring Network Discovery

1. In the NinjaOne platform, click the + icon, then select Add device.
2. Click Network Discovery.

3. The Network Discovery window will open. Configure the network and location parameters for discoverable devices and add any credentials they may require.

4. In the Network Discovery window, configure the following settings:

5. In the Credentials (optional) section, enter any credentials used by the devices you are discovering. Refer to NinjaOne NMS: Network Discovery Credentials for more information.

Running and Saving Network Discovery

After configuring Network Discovery, you can click Run discovery to perform the discovery immediately, or click Save and close to save the network discovery job.

Running a Network Discovery Job

After you click Run discovery, NinjaOne will search for eligible devices on your network. During the network discovery job, NinjaOne will create a service named Ninja NMS Manager Service and a corresponding process named nmsmanager.exe, which will promote the device to become the NMS delegate. If you close this window while the job is running, NinjaOne will display an alert.

• Click Close and continue to close the Network Discovery window and keep the job running.
• Click View job history to open the Job history tab. Refer to the Viewing Network Discovery Job History section of this article for more information.

Saving and Scheduling a Network Job

Saving network discovery jobs enables you to re-run specific job configurations as needed, or on a custom schedule.

1. Set up your network discovery job as described in the Configuring Network Discovery section of this article. When finished, click Save and close. The Save network discovery window will open.
2. Activate the Enable discovery job toggle, then use the drop-down menus to enter a job name and configure an optional job schedule. You can schedule network jobs to run on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Network Discovery Job Schedule Settings

Enter the following settings when scheduling a network job. When finished, click Apply. The job appears on the Saved jobs tab.

Viewing Saved Network Discovery Jobs

The Saved jobs tab allows you to view all jobs that you have saved after running.

1. In NinjaOne, navigate to Administration → Devices → Discovery and click the Saved jobs tab. This tab will display a list of saved jobs, which you can filter by data column.

Viewing Network Scan Details

Click a saved network job to open the Network scan details window. The window displays the following:

Editing Saved Jobs

1. Place your cursor over a job, then click the actions menu when it appears, and choose one of the following options from the drop-down menu:
   • Edit: Change the job's scheduling parameters.
   • Clone: Create a duplicate of the job.
   • Enable or Disable: Activate or deactivate a job.
   • Delete: Remove the job from the Saved jobs list.

Viewing Network Discovery Job History

The Job history tab shows all executions of each network discovery job for the past 90 days.

In NinjaOne, navigate to Administration → Devices → Discovery and click the Job history tab. NinjaOne will display a table that lists all previously run network discovery jobs, which you can filter by data column.

Re-running Historical Network Jobs

You can re-run any job instance from the Job history tab.

1. In the Job history tab, place your cursor over a job, then click the actions menu when it appears and choose Run from the drop-down menu.

Saving Historical Network Jobs

You can add any job instance from the Job history tab to your Saved jobs list.

1. In the Job history tab, place your cursor over a job, then click the actions menu when it appears and choose Save.
2. The Save network discovery job window will open. Configure the following settings:

Viewing Job Instances From the Job History Tab

You can view details of specific job run dates and save previously run jobs to your Saved jobs list for future reference.

Viewing Job History Details and Scan Results

Click a saved network job to open the Network scan details window. From the Job history tab, a window will open containing two tabs:

• General: This tab displays the same information as the Network scan details window when accessed from the Saved jobs page.
• Scan results: Clicking this tab displays the results of the network scan for each historical execution of the network job. The window displays a list of each historical job instance, with the following data columns:
  • IP address
  • DNS information
  • Ping time
  • Ports
  • Credentials used

Claiming Ownership of a Network Discovery Job

If the user who created the network discovery job has been deactivated, you can become the new owner of that job by opening the Network scan details window on the Job history tab and clicking the Claim ownership button.

Applying Ping Conditions Through Advanced Settings

Ping conditions are optional, but they let you fine-tune how NinjaOne NMS checks device availability, tailoring the process to your specific network and devices. To apply ping conditions for network discovery:

1. Click Advanced settings.

2. If your device is not local (for example, on a virtual private network (VPN)), consider increasing the Ping timeout (ms) and Ping packet TTL settings.

Advanced Settings Explained

Refer to this table for an explanation of each advanced setting.

For any device not previously used as a network probe, NinjaOne creates a new service that promotes the device to become the NMS delegate. The service is named Ninja NMS Manager Service, and the corresponding process name is nmsmanager.exe.

Adding Discovered Devices to Your Organization

After the network discovery job finishes, you can convert discovered devices to NinjaOne devices, which can be either managed (for example, NinjaOne Mobile Device Management (MDM), Agent, and NMS) or unmanaged.

In NinjaOne, navigate to Dashboard → (Your Organization) → Devices → Discovered. NinjaOne will display the Discovered devices table.

Viewing Device Deployment Status

Before converting devices, review the Deployment status column in the Discovered devices table. This column shows each device's readiness to receive the NinjaOne agent. NinjaOne assigns the following possible statuses to each device:

Converting a Device

From the Discovered devices screen, select the checkbox next to each device you want to convert, then click Add. Select one of the following conversion options:

Assigning Device Roles to Discovered Devices

Device roles determine which NinjaOne policy governs the device. You must assign a role to each device if NinjaOne did not assess its role during discovery. Refer to NinjaOne Endpoint Management: Device Roles for more information.

1. In NinjaOne, navigate to Dashboard → (Your Organization) → Devices → Discovered, then click the device name.
2. In the device's dashboard, navigate to General → Settings → Device information → Edit.

3. In the Edit device information window, use the Device role drop-down menu to select a new role, then click Update.

Additional Resources

Refer to NinjaOne NMS: Device Dashboard Navigation and Management for more information about viewing and configuring NMS devices.