When assessing discovery performance, do not use the numbers from an initial discovery process because it is not representative of typical discovery processes and is usually very costly. In addition, discovery durations vary dramatically based on the type of discovery processing:

  • Discover all

  • Discover pending

  • Discover one device

  • Discover many devices using a seed file

    Each of these must be assessed separately. You can find the time and duration of the discoveries in the Topology Manager section of the output from the sm_tpmgr utility. It lists discovery times and durations similar to that shown in The sm_tpmgr utility: Discovery information in the log file.

    1. Length of Discovery

    Figure 1. The sm_tpmgr utility: Discovery information in the log file

    If a full discovery takes more than 8 hours (including postprocessing and reconfiguration), it might affect normal business operations. In an environment where full discovery can be scheduled over a weekend, 8 hours or more might be acceptable, but between 2 and 5 hours is often required to avoid interfering with possible third shift work.

    Note:

    In addition to the sm_tpmgr utility, the DiscoveryInProgress event could be used with ASL scripting to determine the length of the task.