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Enterprise Reporter 3.5 - Configuration Manager User Guide

Product Overview Configuring the Configuration Manager
Starting the Configuration Manager Finding answers and getting help Overview of Enterprise Reporter Communications and Credentials Required Using the Credential Manager Setting Up Your First Collection Computers (Nodes) Modifying Your Deployment Configuring Global Settings Customizing the Configuration Manager View
Understanding Discoveries Creating Discoveries
Step 1. Create the Discovery (Name) Step 2. Choose what to include in your discovery (Scopes) Step 2a. Choose scopes for your on-premises discoveries
Choosing your Active Directory Scopes Choosing your Computer Scopes Choosing Your Exchange Scopes Choosing Your File Storage Analysis Scopes Choosing Your Microsoft SQL Scopes Choosing Your NTFS Scopes Choosing Your Registry Scopes
Step 2b: Choose scopes for your cloud discoveries Step 3. Schedule your Discovery Step 4: Review the summary
Managing Discoveries Troubleshooting Issues with Enterprise Reporter Appendix: PowerShell cmdlets Appendix: Encryption Key Manager Appendix: Log Viewer

MS SQL Discovery: Include scopes

To explicitly include objects in your Microsoft SQL scope
1
On the Scopes page of the Create Discovery wizard, click Add.
- OR -
If you have a text file containing the computers to be selected, click Import and follow the steps as outlined in Importing Computers to Your Scopes .
2
Click the drop down arrow in the Server selection field to display a list of the SQL Servers®, instances and databases known to Configuration Manager.
3
To add servers, select the servers and click Add.
If your server does not appear on the list, you can type it in the form "SQLServerName" and click Add.
Ensure this server is not included in any other discovery.
- OR -
To add instances, select the instances and click Add.
If your instance does not appear on the list, you can type it in the form "SQLServerName\InstanceName" and click Add.
Ensure that this is the only discovery where the contents of the host SQL Server® are included.
- OR -
To add databases, select the databases and click Add.
If your instance does not appear on the list, you can type it in the form "SQLServerName\InstanceName\Database Name" and click Add.
Ensure that this is the only discovery where the contents of the host SQL Server® are included.
* 
NOTE: You can remove targets in both the Add SQL Scopes dialog box and the Scopes page of the Create Discovery wizard. Select the scopes from the list, and click Remove.
4
Click OK to close the scopes selection.
5
If desired, select Collect Group Members.
If you want to report on the members of any group included in SQL permissions, select this option. Collecting group members increases the discovery time.
6
Click Next to continue to the Exclusions page.

MS SQL Discovery: Optionally refine your scope list with exclusions (Scope Exclusions and Global Exclusions)

There are two ways to refine the scope of your discovery. Both are accessed on the Exclusions page of the Create Discovery wizard.

1
SQL scope exclusions allow you to specifically exclude:
•
an instance or database within a server
•
a database within an instance.
* 
NOTE: If you exclude a specific database or instance, that data will not be available for reporting, as you should not add the database or instance to another discovery.
2
Global exclusions allow you to exclude databases from all servers or instances included in the scope based on their names. By default, all databases that ship with Microsoft® SQL Server® are excluded.
* 
NOTE: To exclude an instance on a server, the server must be included in the scopes. To exclude a database, the server and instance must be included in the scopes.
To exclude specific instances or databases from your discovery (Scope exclusions)
1
On the Exclusions page of the Create Discovery wizard, click the Scope button.
2
Select the scope to modify, and click the Modify button.
3
To exclude instances, ensure the server is expanded, then select the instances and click Add.
The SQL instance "MSSQLServer" is the name Enterprise Reporter gives to an unnamed instance on the server.
- OR -
To exclude databases, expand the instance, select the databases and click Add.
* 
NOTE: You can restore removed targets to the scope by selecting them from the Excluded Scopes list, and clicking Remove.
4
Click OK.
5
Repeat steps 1 through 4 for any other scopes from which you want to set scope exclusions.
6
Click the Global button to set global exclusions.
- OR -
Click Next to continue to the Schedule page.
To exclude all databases with a specific name from your discovery (Global exclusions)
1
On the Exclusions page of the Create Discovery wizard, click the Global button.
2
In the text box, type the name of the database to exclude.
* 
NOTE: You can use the * and ? wildcards when listing global exclusions.
3
Click Add.
4
Click the Scope button to set scope exclusions.
- OR -
Click Next to continue to the Schedule page.

Choosing Your NTFS Scopes

NTFS scopes determine what information will be collected when you run the discovery. There are a number of steps you should take to properly design your discovery.

See also:

•
NTFS Discovery: Best Practices
•
NTFS Discovery: Include scopes
•
NTFS Discovery: Optionally refine your scope list with exclusions
•
NTFS Discovery: Select your global scopes
•
NTFS Discovery: Decide what to collect from any computer in the discovery
•
NTFS Discovery: Configure NAS Host Devices
•
NTFS Discovery: Configure your file collection

NTFS Discovery: Best Practices

This section outlines some best practices to ensure the NTFS discovery and reports are optimized.

Hardware and software
•
It is recommended to have Enterprise Reporter on its own SQL Server or at least a SQL Server that is not already used heavily by other products such as Change Auditor.
•
When collecting Microsoft Office file attributes, Microsoft Office must be installed on the Enterprise Reporter node computer.
•
It is recommended that each node have at least 100GB of hard drive space and 32GB of RAM.
•
Ensure Enterprise Reporter has been updated with the latest hotfix. The product team regularly adds improvements to optimize discovery times.
Discovery setup and scheduling
•
Create a separate discovery for each file server collected. This will allow the schedules to be staggered so that not all file servers are being collected and stored in the database at the same time.
•
To properly stagger the schedules, the discoveries may have to be run a few times to get a baseline of how long each discovery takes to run.
Discovery Scopes page: minimize information collected
•
Only enable Include hidden shares if this data is needed. Selecting this option will cause a great increase in discovery time because all files on a server will be accessed through system shares such as C$ (C:\ drive) which are all the files and folders on the server.
•
Folder Options
•
Only enable the option to collect All folder levels if it is required.
•
Set the Folder depth to limit the collection to only the levels of folder structure required.
•
File Options
•
Only enable the option to Collect files and their basic details like size and attributes if file information is required.
•
Permission Options
•
Only enable the option to Calculate differences between folders and subfolders if the File and Folder Permissions with Differences report is required.
•
Advanced Options
•
Enterprise Reporter 3.0 (and later) has a performance option to break up tasks by share. Enable Create a task per share for each computer to allow multiple nodes/threads to collect one large file server.
•
Prior to Enterprise Reporter 3.0, one computer was considered to be one task. On these versions, if you are collecting 10 file servers, it is recommended to have one node per server that is manually configured to accept one task. This will force each node to collect one file server.
Running Reports
•
When generating large NTFS reports, use the Export to CSV option. This will be much faster than generating the report in other formats.
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