Maps - auto discovery of connected devices?

Greetings All.

The last few years my job has been very SAM-heavy, with lots of Linux, Windows, Kubernetes script monitors.

Now I have a requirement to build some Maps. Like network device maps with the Big Router connecting to some smaller routers, and access switches connecting below that.

I actually know very little about Solarwinds Maps.

I started by creating a map with the Big Router, and expected it to auto-build connections to the other routers and access switches. But nothing happened.

Suspect that there is some kind of discovery protocol not enabled or not accessible by Solarwinds. 90% of devices are Cisco so I'm thinking maybe Cisco Discovery Protocol (?).

Can someone point me in the right direction in terms of what needed for these network devices to auto-discover connections for my Solarwinds Map? I'm reading through the Orion Maps documentation but so far haven't found what I'm looking for.

Thanks!

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Accepted answers

JP_net

You should be able to put 2 nodes, that have connections, on a map and there will be logical connections that show up if you are monitoring the topology and the topology MIBs/OIDs are available to SolarWinds. If you list resources on the nodes, you should be able to see if topology is selected. If topology isn't selected there will be no links.

However, I find with our clients that there are sometimes layer 3 connections like routes or other protocols that get added to the maps automatically and it doesn't represent your physical connections. Also, on certain polls some of these connections can come and go depending on the protocol. I usually recommend maps be built to specifications in a more manual way. That way everything that you care about is represented in the diagram. Another thing that really can misrepresent what is going on in your network are port channels, multi chassis port channel protocols, and tunneling might be issues with your maps. Automated connections don't take any of that into account at the moment either.

Sriram_1

Agree what JP_net said, you need to check if the topology is selected in list resources and OIDs from the devices are getting the data into solarwinds.

vinay.by

I would start in the following order:

1. Are you monitoring all interfaces on all devices in your SolarWinds environment ?

2. Without monitoring all interfaces including Topology L2/L3 under list resources the connections won't appear automatically on your map.

3. If all the devices that you need has been onboarded into SolarWinds (including all interfaces and topology layer 2 and layer 3) then it should be pretty straight forward. You just drag the devices that interest you and under connections make sure 'shows connections is on' which will then automatically pop up all relevant connections that are available between the devices.

If you notice any gaps in that case you need to go back to Network Discovery and re-run the same to onboard the missing ones. Before doing that as well check if this is what you need. You can as well create dummy links or lines between the devices but then its a lot of manual work and you know you will need to spend a lot of time in maintaining these maps in that case.

Hope this helps.

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