In the physical-transport domain, IP Availability Manager discovers Layer 2 (data-link) and Layer 3 (network) connectivity in multivendor, switched, and routed networks. It discovers the network devices by sending them Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) and SNMP polls.
In a Network Protocol Manager deployment, IP Availability Manager not only performs its traditional discovery of network topology objects, but it also creates BGP, EIGRP, IS-IS, and OSPF topology collection sets from the discovered network objects. Network Protocol Manager imports the topology collection sets from IP Availability Manager. Topology and CLI device-access object import from IP Availability Manager summarizes IP Availability Manager routing-topology discovery and Network Protocol Manager topology import.
By default, IP Availability Manager is not enabled to create the protocol topology collection sets. The VMware Smart Assurance Network Protocol Manager Configuration Guide provides instructions for enabling this feature.
