Pro Tips with Esben #38
While being one of the basics, getting assets to be scanned can be a challenge in large environments due to the high number of assets and possible errors. This month we’re taking a look at some tools you can use to resolve scanning issues a little bit quicker, this time, also in video format!
Scanning assets is at the core of Lansweeper since scanning means having data. However, there are many things that can cause issues with scanning ranging from GPO changes to firewall or credential adjustments. Hopefully, with some of the tools below, it will make it a bit easier to identify which assets, and why they are not being scanned.
Recently we added three additional fields to make it easier to identify where potential problems might lie.
| Column Name | Data Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| LastseenCredentials | nvarchar | Credentials used for the last successful scan of the asset |
| LasttriedCredentials | nvarchar | Credentials used for the last scan attempt made for the asset, successful or unsuccessful |
| LasttriggeredCredentials | nvarchar | Credentials used for the last scan attempt made for the asset using one of the Rescan buttons, successful or unsuccessful |
In the case of credential problems, these new fields will help you check which credentials were successful in the past and which ones have been tried so you can more easily troubleshoot. To let you do this I’ve added these fields to one of our default error reports so you have the additional context to identify which credentials might be causing the issue or which ones are missing.
To help you have an overview of what type of scan issues you have, I’ve created a chart report that gives you an overview of exactly that. A quick overview of the error types in your Lansweeper installation. If you’re looking for help on how to resolve these issues, you can always take a look at our knowledgebase which has a lot of resources for all kinds of errors that might occur.
Lastly, to get a better sense of the health of your scanning, I made an overview of the successful vs unsuccessful scans.
Discovering Potential Causes
Something even better than finding issues and resolving them is preventing them. Scan issues can be a result of many things. As listed above there can be issues with requirements or network setup-related issues. But even if you have everything configured correctly with your credentials, network, and requirements, misconfiguration of Lansweeper can also result in errors.
One of the main reasons that scan issues can occur is when an asset is scanned by multiple targets which do not all have the correct credentials mapped. This can result in assets sometimes being scanned correctly, and other times showing an error depending on which scanning target performed a scan. Additionally, it’s also a bit wasteful of resources if you scan assets with multiple targets without a specific use case.
To discover which assets are being scanned by multiple scanning targets you can go quite deep. I will go over the most used targets and provide some insight on the IP Range scans, Active scans (active directory), and LsAgent.
The first report shows your assets that are in multiple IP Ranges, which is useful to optimize your scanning IP scanning targets and prevent potential issues if you don’t have the right credentials mapped.
The next report shows assets that have been scanned by 2 or more different scanning targets in the last 14 days. It looks at IP Range Scanning targets, Active scanning targets (Active Directory), and LsAgent.
Hopefully, these resources help you get a better overview of the scan issues and prevent potential future ones. However, if you’re looking for more insights, have specific use cases or other ideas of data points that would help your day-to-day. You can always leave feedback in our community.