Troubleshooting Exploration Phase Failures in Discovery

Below shows Discovery state stuck on “Active”.

We go to the ECC Queue, and filter out all the processed items to verify there is nothing still in the “ready” or “processing state. Basically, you right-click on the “State” column and choose Filter Out from the pop-up menu.

As you can see, it now shows the error which means processing did complete however something also did go wrong.

The next step is to check the Discovery log. The log shows Discovery starting, a shazzam probe was launched, it identified the device, it found a match in the CDMDB (hyy_on_esx3), then it failed with a sensor error: Sensor error when processing Windows – Hardware Information: No sensors defined. This means a probe was launched but no corresponding sensor was defined to process the data.

So Discovery stopped in an “Active” State. The State is only listed as “Completed” if the Started and Completed values match.

At this case, because of the sensor error, the Discovery ended without updating the completed count and the state remains active. At this point, our options are to cancel the discovery by clicking on the State field and selecting “Completed” and Save it.

This takes care of the failed Discovery however we still have the sensor issue. Someone added the “Windows – Hardware information” probe to the exploration phase and didn’t realize the probe lacked a corresponding sensor.

To check, you can click on the probe itself by clicking on the “Windows – Hardware Information” link. The probe’s configuration opens as highlighted in yellow. The error string highlighted in blue states there are no sensors defined as highlighted in green.

To fix, we will go to the probe definition.

We need to first find what class of device this is.

In this case, it is a “Hyper-V Server”. So, we will go to the WIndows Classification and open the “Hyper-V Server” configuration. In the bottom of the configuration are a list of probes used by this classification. The WMIRunner-Windows – Hardware Information circled is what was the probe that was added.

So, we can go to that probe by clicking on the WMIRunner-Windows – Hardware Information Link and create a sensor in the Sensors section…

Or since this probe comes with a ServiceNow based system and by design has no sensor, this is an incorrect setup. So, we should remove it. To remove, you go back to the Hyper-V Server Windows Classification screen and click on the Edit button for the Trigger probes:

Once the Members list appears, remove the “Windows – Hardware Information” from the Triggers probes List by clicking on it and then clicking on the “remove” button so that it goes back to the Collection list.

Don’t forget to Save it

Now, if you go back and run the Discovery again, it should complete without any issues.

So if the Discovery is stuck in an Active State, and the S tared and Completed counts do not match, and the ECC Queue records have all been processed, this indicates Discovery has finished but something went wrong. To resolve, cancel the Discovery or manually change its State to Completed. Then you find out what went wrong, fix it, and then re-run the Discovery.

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