Importing Discovery data to Assets
To import Discovery data into Assets you navigate to the Import section in the object schema configuration.
Import configuration in Assets
Once you install the Discovery app, you'll see a new import type in Assets (for Cloud, it's available by default). You need to use this type to create an import configuration before you can start importing your data.
For more information on how to do it, see Creating import configuration.
Importing data for the first time
An import from Discovery will include a lot of data. We recommend that you configure it in an empty object schema. At the end of the import configuration, you can also choose to automatically create the predefined structure and predefined configuration — this will create all object types with attributes and relationships in the schema, as well as set up all object type mappings in your import configuration.
The initial import will take more time than the subsequent ones, that's why we recommend the following steps:
Initial import
- In your import configuration, disable the object type mapping for Application, Application Services, Virtual Guest and Patches.
(If you created a predefined configuration, these maps will be disabled by default.) - Enable and sync your import. Assets will import only hosts and basic corresponding data, which should make the import faster.
Subsequent imports
- Enable the Applications mapping in the second import.
- Enable the Application Services in the third import.
- Enable the Virtual Guest and Patches in the following imports.
Import type settings
Optional Date patterns
You don't need to specify the date pattern in the general import configuration settings. However, it could be wise to specify them since you will get some improved performance. Here is an example of a date pattern:
Date Format | dd/MM/yyyy |
Date/Time Format | dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm |
Module Specific Configuration
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Directory | Specify the directory where the discovery data is placed on disc from the discovery/collector application. The user running Jira must have WRITE permissions on this directory. This directory should also be dedicated to only Assets Discovery data! |
| ZIP password | Optional password for ZIP extraction |
Fetch data strategy
Assets Discovery import will import the data in the configured "Directory" folder. However, on each import execution, it will only import the "oldest" data grouped by date. Assets looks into the filename to recognize the date, not the modify date on the disk.
So if you have this data in the directory:
-rw-r--r--@ 1 mathias staff 52719 Oct 23 08:50 4D268_2017-01-05_1129.zip
-rw-r--r--@ 1 mathias staff 1724595 Oct 23 08:50 67A4A_2017-06-10_0023.zip
-rw-r--r--@ 1 mathias staff 1724595 Oct 23 08:50 57G4K_2017-06-10_0242.zip
-rw-r--r--@ 1 mathias staff 1724711 Oct 23 08:50 67A4A_2017-08-24_1958.zip- The first import execution will only import the 4D268_2017-01-05_1129.zip since it's the oldest one.
- Then next run will import the 67A4A_2017-06-10_0023.zip and the 57G4K_2017-06-10_0242.zip since they have the same date.
- The last one will be 67A4A_2017-08-24_1958.zip
So in order to import these four (4) files, you will have to run the import multiple times (in this case three (3) times)
Child directories
The are some directories that automatically will be created.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
corrupt_data_files | All files that we can't unzip or de-serialize, and that we consider corrupt, will be moved to this folder |
history_imported_data | The history of all import files (not the latest imported) |
latest_imported_data | The latest imported files (the last import execution) |
Important conclusions
This is important to understand since the Discovery import type consider the data for the same date as a complete set of infrastructure data. So let's say you have configured "Missing Objects", then you need to make sure all data in your complete infrastructure to be available for the same date, otherwise Assets will trigger on the "Missing Object" configuration.
If you know that you have configured the discovery scanner on different parts of your network, and on different days. Then you need to either turn off the "Missing Object" configuration, or if you still want to have "Missing Object" configured, you will have to separate the different parts of data to different Import configurations, so create one Import configuration for each part of your network. Make sure to have different Discovery folders configured for each Import configuration!