6- Discovery Methods & Boundaries

SCCM can manage the reso

There several ways of discovering resources (computers, users, mobile devices, printers etc) in your environment.

1. Active Directory Forest Discovery:

This discovery method finds Sites and Subnets and creates boundaries for each of those sites and subnets.

To Enable this discovery method, start the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager R2 Console. Select Administration, expand Hierarchy Configuration and right click Active Directory Forest Discovery.

Under the properties, choose all 3 options. So, AD Site Boundaries & IP Address Range Boundaries will be created automatically.

2. Active Directory Group Discovery:

It is used to find Active Directory local, global and universal security groups. Right click and open Active Directory Group Discovery properties and

add location.

Hit Browse button and select where your groups are located.

 IMPORTANT: If you have computers that you don't want to discover by system discovery, You should avoid using your root domain in group discovery. Put your groups in an OU and show the path for that OU instead. 

If you specify your domain here, discovery will include all domain groups, and then discovery will find the group named "Domain Computers". Domain computers basically means all computers that are joined to your domain. If Site Wide Client Push is enabled, it will install the client on all computers in your domain. 

3. Active Directory System Discovery: 

It is used to find computer object in your domain. Right click Active Directory System Discovery and Enable it. Choose the star icon and select your domain or a specific OU. 

There are 2 options here;

Recursive: Specifies that the search includes child containers. This check box is selected by default. If it is cleared, child containers are not searched.

Include groups: Specifies that objects within groups are discovered by this method. If it is selected, you can discover objects in other domains, but the likelihood of discovering the same object more than once is increased. If this check box is cleared, duplicate objects and objects in other domains are less likely to be found. This will result in the discovery process completing more quickly. This check box is cleared by default.

Select Options tab, In this picture I configure SCCM to discover only the computers which logged on for the last 15 days.

4. Active Directory User Discovery :

It is used to discover Active Directory user accounts. Enable this discovery method and specify the domain by clicking start icon.

5. Heartbeat Discovery:

This discovery methods is enabled by default. It doesn't find new resources but it verifies if the resources are active or not. You can manually run heartbeat discovery from the client as well. To do that, Open Configuration Manager Properties and run Discovery Data Collection Cycle.

6. Network Discovery:

All devices that can have an IP address can be discovered by this method but it is not recommended by Microsoft if you dont really need this discovery. The reason behind this is the high traffic that would be created by this method. Other discovery methods can not find workgroup computers but network discovery can. You can discover printers, routers, switches etc.

There are 3 levels of Network Discovery. 3rd level is the generates the highest network traffic.

1. Topology

2. Topology and Client

3. Topology, Client, and Client Operating System

If you need to use Network Discovery, start with Topology level (Level 1) and discover your network infrastructure. Then change the configuration and set it to Topology and Client (Level 2).

I am not going to enable Network Discovery, because I dont need it now.

 Boundary: 

In System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, a boundary is a network location on the intranet that can contain one or more devices that you want to manage. Boundaries can be an IP subnet, Active Directory site name, IPv6 Prefix, or an IP address range, and the hierarchy can include any combination of these boundary types. To use a boundary, you must add the boundary to one or more boundary groups. Boundary groups are collections of boundaries. By using boundary groups, clients on the intranet can find an assigned site and locate content when they have to install software, such as applications, software updates, and operating system images.

Boundaries are automatically discovered when  Active Directory Forest Discovery runs. If you have one SCCM Site and one Distribution Point, it is enough to create only one Boundary group.

 Hit Add button to add our boundary to the boundary group.

Aşşağıdaki gibi assigned site'ınızı seçin ve Site System Serverınızı ekleyin.

Choose Assigned Site and add your Site System Servers here.

I enabled all discovery methods except Network Discovery. Also because Forest Discovery is enabled, my boundary is created  automatically. I just added that boundary to the boundary group.