During the discovery process, Network Protocol Manager uses instances of certain VMware Smart Assurance object classes to create within its repository a data model representation of the discovered routing topology. The various data models that are supported by Network Protocol Manager are shown in Appendix A, “Data Models.”

Network Protocol Manager performs the following steps to discover the routing topology in the managed network:

  1. Imports a protocol topology collection set of objects and (optional) CLI device-access objects from IP Availability Manager, and adds the objects to its repository.

    A protocol topology collection set contains routing-enabled devices along with containment and connectivity objects that are associated with the devices.

  2. Probes the imported devices for routing topology information.

  3. Creates in its repository instances of the discovered routing topology objects (such as routing-protocol service and endpoint objects) and their relationships.

  4. Combines the information that is collected from the various probes to create additional routing topology objects (routing-protocol adjacency objects and routing-protocol network objects) and additional relationships.

  5. Creates relationships that associate the routing topology objects with the underlying physical objects from IP Availability Manager.

  6. Exports device and routing topology to the Global Manager.