Part 104: SCCM 2007 Discovery Methods

In this part, we will begin to discover resources in the environment.There are six types of discovery in SCCM 2007 SP1:-

a) AD System Discovery- discover system/computer in Active Directory
b) AD User Discovery - discover users in Active Directory
c) AD System Group Discovery- discover Organization Unit, Nested Group,Universal group in Active Directory
d) AD Security Group Discovery -discover security group in Active Directory
e) Network - Discover all devices in the network which using IP address
f) Heatbeat -Discover resources using heatbeat for checking availability


You can venture into different types of discovery by going to:-

Site management > LAB Site code > Site Settings > Discovery Method >

Discovery 1:- Heatbeat

Default set to 1 week
For lab purpose, we set to 1 hour









Discovery 2: AD System Discovery

Select local domain to search in the whole domain which included sub-group/tree. We can define to search in the specific OU.







Default Polling- 1 days
We will change polling to 1 minute in the lab. Check Run discovery as soon as possible to execute and get the result now.

Active Directory Attribute tab include the attribute that we would like to gather. You can use ADSIEdit.msc to check the attribute name and you can enter into this area.




Discovery 3: AD Users Discovery


Enable search through local domain which included recursive and groups.
Default Polling: 1 days
Lab environment: Set to 1 minute
You enable this discovery if you would like to deploy package based on users.




Discovery 4: AD System Group Discovery


Default Polling: 1 days
Lab environment: Set to 1 minute








Discovery 5: AD Security Group Discovery


Default Polling: 1 days
Lab environment: Set to 1 minute








Discovery 6: Network


Enable if you would like to discover any device (unix, switch, router, firewall,etc) in the network which respond to IP address.









Define the searching either through
Subnet - search in subnet address range
Domain - search in the domain
SNMP - public community
SNMP device - enter ip or device name
DHCP - search in the dhcp scope
Schedule - run discovery based on specific schedule.
Default is: Default 2 hour.













That's concluded SCCM discovery method. Stay tune for part 105: SCCM 2007 Client Agent Configuration.