NetCrunch installation and first steps to complete the automatic setup.

See what is automatically done by NetCrunch during the program installation. Learn what to do when you open the program for the first time. These tasks take no more than a few minutes - but will save you lots of time and hassle in the future.

Trial or License

If you haven't used NetCrunch before, NetCrunch offers up to 30 days of free trial for registered accounts (if you prefer not to register, you can still test it for 7 days).

Opening NetCrunch administration console for the first time, two options will appear, 'Install license' and 'Continue'.

If you have a license already, choose the 'Install license' option. You will then be able to decide how you want to activate the license (there are two options for that).

If you haven't got a license yet, click on the 'continue' button. You need to create a NetCrunch account first, either using a Google account or another email account. Registering trial will grant you a total of 30 days of a free evaluation period. It will also provide you with an option of disabling and enabling different NetCrunch modules in your trial, testing what NetCrunch modules' combination best suits your needs.

If you wish to continue without registration, pick 'Continue without registering' option in the bottom right corner. Please note that an unregistered account has no option of enabling and disabling different modules of NetCrunch during the trial period.

Creating network atlas

NetCrunch collects and stores all monitoring data (related to nodes, alerts, and trends) from your network in the Network Atlas. To start monitoring your network you need to create a Network Atlas. Click on 'Create Network Atlas' to proceed.

There are two ways of creating Network Atlas:

• Manually - Empty database will be created, all nodes can be added by hand or by scan
• Automatically - Network Atlas creator will be run - it will guide you step by step to add all network devices that you want to monitor.

This article will guide you on how to create a Network Atlas using a network scanner.

Network atlas scan guide

The wizard that guides you through the process of creating atlas consist of 5 steps, each step will be described below

1. Add all networks and AD containers that should be scanned

This step allows you to specify networks and Active Directory containers/Workgroups that should be scanned for nodes by NetCrunch. When NetCrunch detects that the server it is running on belongs to a particular AD container - it will include this container automatically.

For each scanned network, you can specify what devices or address ranges should not be scanned. This is what exclusions are for - you can set them manually to avoid scanning particular nodes or nodes within a range of IP addresses.

Additionally, you can discover neighborhood networks in given hops.

2. Configure SNMP profiles

This step will ask you to provide SNMP credentials that are being used by your network devices (switches, routers, printers, etc.)

By default, NetCrunch assumes 'public' snmpv2, but for most cases, you will need to specify profiles.

It's possible to create multiple SNMP profiles for different SNMP versions (v1, v2c, v3).

Make sure that you include all community strings along with users and passwords (for SNMPv3) for NetCrunch to discover all of your devices.

3. Discovery mode

This step will ask you to select discovery mode - by default, all devices are selected to be scanned and discovered - and this is the recommended option. It's possible to remove unnecessary nodes from NetCrunch after the scan.

Two other options modes are often used by experienced NetCrunch users - by using them you can prevent NetCrunch from adding certain types of devices to the network atlas.

4. Discovering TCP/IP network services

NetCrunch uses network services as primary indicators whether nodes are responding or not.

The default list contains most commonly encountered services in the network - each device specified in the first step will be scanned against this list to see if any of the network services from the list are available on it. All discovered services will start to be monitored automatically.

If a particular service that you wish to monitor isn't on this list - you can always add it by clicking a proper button in the upper part of the window.

This window will also let you specify three values for each service (or for all services at once)

• Repeat count - This value indicates how many times NetCrunch tries to check if service is available
• Additional Repeat count - This value indicates additional retries if service is not responding
• Timeout (min) - This field indicates how long NetCrunch will wait for an answer from given service

5. Ready to start the network discovery process

The last step is the confirmation of previously chosen options. To start the scan of your network, click on Start button

Scan finished

Just after the first scan, a short tutorial highlighting the key elements on the first screen of NetCrunch will show up. Take a moment for NetCrunch to show you how to navigate in the main program window. You can also skip it if you have used NetCrunch in the past.

Additional Wizard will then appear - it will guide you through the process of adding credential profiles for nodes. It consists of 4 steps.

1. Monitoring Credentials

This step will let you review all supported operating systems that can be monitored. Here you can provide access credentials for all types of systems that are present in your network

2. Automatic Monitoring Packs

This step will show you all pre-configured alerts that have already been applied to discovered nodes. You can turn off alerts you don't want to receive by clicking on individual tiles or turn off whole sections by clicking on the section name.

Each section shows how many nodes are affected by these rules.

3. Notification scheme

This step will let you configure basic notifications - by default emails will be dispatched only for critical alerts, other types of alerts are by default just saved to the event log.

4. Finish

That's all, the basic discovery of network is now completed, monitoring have been enabled for the devices and systems that you specified credentials for. Some device type discoveries may still be happening in the background - it's possible to review them later in the Server Tasks in the top right corner.