Is SNMP the Only Way to Register Windows-based Devices in XMC?

[SysAdmin11]

Is SNMP the only way of discovering and adding Windows-based devices to Extreme Management Center (XMC) 8.3.2.11, meaning that I need to configure SNMP settings on every Windows device within the environment before I will be able to do anything with them in XMC or Extreme Control?

SNMP seems to be somewhat of a “second-class citizen” on Windows, in that SNMPv3 isn’t even supported on Windows and that there are indications that SNMP support may be dropped outright from future versions of Windows.  Considering how prevalent Windows is within corporate environments, and the fact that other vendor’s products seem to be able to discover Windows-based devices without relying upon SNMP, I just find it surprising if SNMP is the only way to register Windows-based endpoints in XMC.

Apologies in advance if this this seems to be such a fundamental question, but I want to make sure that I’m not overlooking something.

[Zdeněk_Pala]

XMC is not designed to manage servers. It is focused on networking!

By Manage I mean reconfigure, change behavior, control...

[SysAdmin11]

Okay, thank you Zdenek.  I had actually already completed the Extreme Management Center Overview course on the Dojo and started the one on Control.  Reviewing the “Configuration Management / Device Management” section of the XMC Dojo video seems to confirm that XMC truly speaks only SNMP and CLI, so I suppose that’s that.

It just seems odd to me that XMC is restricted to only SNMP and CLI when Windows is such a prevalent business / organizational operating system.  This, combined with SNMP having “second-class citizen” status within Windows (it doesn’t even support SNMPv3) makes me feel that XMC may not be a great choice for network management of a Windows-centric network.

Thank you for your help!

[Zdeněk_Pala]

This discussion is going to the direction “how you define manage”, “how you define monitor”.

It seems that free online training may be beneficial for you: here

If you do not have credentials then sign up.

Best regards

[SysAdmin11]

Hello Zdenek, and thank you for your response.

I would like to see things like which endpoint has the highest utilization on a switch, use ExtremeControl to manage what resources a particular endpoint can access, etc.

When you state “configure your switches to report endpoints”, can you point me to the documentation that describes how to do so?  I have been reviewing the XMC and ExtremeControl documentation, and while there is detailed information on a number of different things within the documentation, I feel like I’m missing some foundational basics that the other explanations build upon.

For example, the ExtremeControl documentation indicates “The first step in adding network devices to Policy tab is to add the devices to the Extreme Management Center database.”  However, other systems that I’ve worked with are able to perform at least a rudimentary initial scan of the network using ping and WMI calls, but when I attempt network discovery within XMC, the only devices that are discovered are the Extreme switches and the XMC and ExtremeControl servers within the environment.  No endpoints are found unless I manually configure SNMP upon them.  That’s what led me to posting my initial question.

It almost seems as though XMC is limited to managing only switches and similar network gear, and cannot manage Windows-based endpoints unless those systems have had SNMP configured upon them.  I don’t even see a way within XMC to perform a simple ping scan of devices.  Is my understanding accurate?