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I have multiple remote site installations in my environment and one of them is not acting as expected in regards to the scheduling of scans. From the documentation, discovery scans are set up on the remote site, but scheduling is handled by the central site. I have found this to be true on all but one of my installations. The device-scanning screen allows me to create discovery scans but I cannot schedule them.

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On the remote site that is not acting as expected, I can create discovery scans and schedule them.

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Is there a way to correct this issue? I have already tried removing the site and re-adding it to my central installation.

Thank you!

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All my remote collectors allow me to change their own scanning there. Unless you specify the remote networks on the central server the Remote COllectors have their own scheduling.

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dbeeto: Thank you for your response!

Wouldn’t defining the remote subnets on the primary installation tell the primary installation to scan those subnets? Based on my understanding of the documentation, the remote installation scans the subnets and then passes the data back to the primary installation while the primary installation handles the scheduling of the remote scans. I’m not saying you are wrong, perhaps I am misunderstanding the documentation. I would really like Spiceworks Support to respond to this to clarify.

Either way you look at it (the way you defined it vs my understanding) I am having an issue. I have four remote collectors, all of them have the networks I want them to scan defined on them. Three of them will not allow me to schedule the scans, they simply won’t give me the option to do it (see my first screen shot). The fourth will allow me to schedule the scans (see my second screen shot). Also, I have zero remote subnets defined on my primary installation. So, either way, at least one of the remote collectors is not working correctly.

Thank you!

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On the three remote sites that won’t let you schedule, can you check the Additional Settings at the bottom of the page and make sure that Schedule discovery scans per “Your Network” range is enabled?

I’m pretty sure it’s not (based on your screenshots), but toggling it should get you where you want to be.

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Sorry I took so long to respond, the end of the fiscal year is a pain.

Thank you for your response, Matt! I had totally forgotten about that setting.

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Any time! I just hope it worked for you.

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It is working, for the most part. It is scanning the subnets that I have defined, it is just not scanning them at the scheduled times. I disabled the Schedule discovery scans per “Your Network” range setting, which removed my ability to schedule the scans on the remote installation, and then defined some schedules on my primary installation. I then noticed that the remote installations started scanning immediately. When I reviewed the inventory this morning I noticed that the servers in the server subnet at the remote site were scanned this morning (Thursday) at 8 am. They are not scheduled to be scanned until the weekend at 5 am.

Thank you!

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So this is where it gets a little weird… There are two types of scans that Spiceworks does. Discovery scans and Group scans.

Discovery scans are controlled by the IP ranges you enter at the top of the Device Scanning page. It handles the locating of new devices within the IP ranges you enter, but skips any known devices.

Group Scans are controlled further down the page under the Scan Schedules section. It handles the updating of the devices that are already in Inventory. It uses the hostname of the device in inventory, performs a DNS lookup on the hostname to get the IP and scans that IP.

In a Remote Site environment, things get a little more complicated.

The Discovery Scans are handled per site. Each site needs to have the IP ranges it’s responsible for setup in it’s settings page. This is how the application (as a whole) know what device is in what location. If you set all the IP ranges on the Central Server, then the application will think that the central server is responsible for scanning those devices from then on (via group scans). Whenever a site (remote or central) Discovers a device for the first time, the Inventory entry in the DB is tagged with that site’s ID number.

Here’s why that’s important. The Groups scans are all controlled by the central server. It has the ENTIRE inventory on hand. So when a group scan is scheduled (again, in the Scheduled Scans section of the settings page), Spiceworks will look at the group of devices it’s supposed to scan, determine which sites are associated with the devices in that group, and issue scans commands to each of those sites. The remote sites will run the group scans for the devices indicted, then feed their results back to the central server for updates.

To sum up, Discovery scan ranges (the IP ranges listed under Your Networks) is per site. Each site needs to have the IP ranges it’s responsible for scanning entered into the Your Networks section. Group scans are handled entirely by the central server (in the Scheduled Scans section of the settings). The central server issues scan commands to each site and awaits results.

I hope all that makes sense.
If it doesn’t, or if you have questions, let me know!

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That makes sense, thank you for the clarification. How much bandwidth usage are we talking about with the discovery scans? Is there a way to limit the discovery scans to a specific time period?

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Each site’s Discovery Scans are able to be scheduled whenever you like. The settings are in the Additional Settings section we talked about previously. So you could have one site discover devices on Monday, another on Tuesday, etc…

As for bandwidth, it’s negligible.

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Awesome! Thank you!

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