Enterprise Reporter 3.5 - Configuration Manager User Guide


	NOTE: You can see the number of items that have been changed, and therefore updated, in the statistics for the task. For more information, see Viewing Statistics .

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Once all tasks have been processed, the discovery is finished.


	NOTE: For information on configuring nodes, see Creating Your First Cluster and Node and Improving the Performance of Your Discoveries .

Types of Tasks

Each discovery is broken down into tasks for processing. You will see these task types as you manage your discoveries. There are several types of tasks.

Table 41. Types of Tasks in Configuration Manager
Task Type	Description
Resolution	Examines your scope and reduces it to the smallest number of targets. For a Microsoft SQL discovery, a target is a SQL Server.
Discovery	Displays as the name of the target. A discovery task collects the data from the target and updates the Enterprise Reporter database.
Group Membership	When the collection requires information from other targets, to improve performance the work is performed at the end of the collection. This can prevent the same data from being repeatedly collected.

Manually Running a Discovery

You can manually run a discovery at any time—unless it is currently running. Before you manually run a discovery, check the Next Run column in the Manage Discoveries main view to see if the next run is scheduled to start soon. A Discovery that has no enabled schedules does not show a Next Run time.

To manually run a discovery

On the Manage Discoveries pane, select the discovery.

Click Run.

Viewing your Discoveries

Ideally, you can configure and schedule your discoveries and the Configuration Manager will run discovery jobs to provide fresh data to the Report Manager at the intervals you have specified. However, issues can occur that require your attention. For example, a SQL Server could go offline, or another user might cancel your discovery. Or, you receive inquiries from users about the freshness of the data or whether a particular object is included in the data on which they are reporting. You can use the Manage Discoveries pane to view your discoveries and answer questions about data collection.

The main Manage Discoveries pane is a listing of all the discoveries created on any console connected to your Enterprise Reporter server. A snapshot of the current state of each discovery is shown. For each discovery, you can see the following:

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A red indicator if there were errors during the last run. This indicates that all of the requested data was not collected. If all errors have been suppressed for this discovery, the red indicator will also be suppressed.

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Next Run: The next run of the discovery. This is calculated based on the discovery’s schedule.

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If the discovery is currently running, this column contains a Processing link, which you can click to view the tasks for the discovery. For more information, see Viewing the Tasks for a Processing Discovery .

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If the discovery is waiting to run, this column contains a Pending link that you can click to the view the tasks for the discovery.

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If the discovery is not running, the date and time of the next run is shown.

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If the discovery is not scheduled, and is not processing or pending, this column is empty.

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Last Run Status: The results of the last run of the discovery - whether it finished, finished but was unable to collect all of the data, or was canceled.

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Last Run: When the discovery last completed. This will be empty until the first successful completion of the discovery.

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Last Run Time: How long the most recent run of the discovery took to complete. This time is measured from the time the discovery is submitted to the server until the last task finishes running.


	NOTE: The total time for the discovery to complete may actually be longer than the sum of its tasks, as the cluster may have been processing other discoveries at the same time, or there may have been issues on the node or server.

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Average Run Time: The average of the Last Run Time of the 10 most recent runs of the discovery. Only runs with a Last Run Status of Finished or Finished with failures are included.

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Error Suppressions: Indicates when errors have been suppressed for a discovery.

By default, discoveries are grouped by cluster and sorted by discovery name. The current grouping is displayed just above the column headers. An arrow in the column header indicates the current sort.

The Manage Discoveries pane can be customized to display columns in an alternate sequence or to display discoveries with revised grouping, sorting, and filtering. Changes made to the Manage Discoveries pane are automatically saved and used for subsequent logins of the same account.

To sort a column

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Click the up arrow

to sort in descending alphabetical order (Z to A).