Device Parenting

The proper parenting of managed devices in Netreo is extremely important for getting an accurate display of your network topology and to aid in incident management.

Only users with an access level of administrator or above can change parent/child relationships between managed devices in Netreo.

Administrators have two methods available for configuring device parenting in Netreo:

• Auto-parenting
• Manual parenting

Both methods can be used together to create the most accurate parent/child relationship map possible.

The Host tab of the Device Dashboard for any given managed device indicates which of the parent/child relationships for that device have been configured automatically and which have been configured manually.

Auto-parenting

Layer 2/3 parent/child relationships for devices in your network can be automatically configured from the Regenerate Parenting page (Administration >> Parenting >> Reset).

Netreo supports global automatic parenting on a scheduled basis. The current process is:

1. Auto-parenting scans for newly added managed devices approximately every hour.
2. If new devices were added since the last scan, global auto-parenting is performed.
3. Global auto-parenting also runs once every day, even if no new devices were added.
4. The auto-parenting process does not reset any manually configured parenting relationships (see Manual Parenting below).

When performing the auto-parenting scan, Netreo uses three methods (in the order shown) to determine parent/child relationships for the managed devices on your network:

1. Traceroute - Run to determine the layer 3 connections between devices.
2. Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) - For Cisco devices, CDP is then run to determine layer 2 connections. (If CDP does not find any connections for a Cisco device, LLDP is run to determine layer 2 connections.)
3. Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) - For non-Cisco devices (or Cisco devices for which connections were not found), LLDP is run to determine layer 2 connections.

Netreo then uses the collected information to determine if any layer 2 connections should supersede any layer 3 connections. For example, assume the following connections are found:

• Device 1 -- Device 3 on layer 3
• Device 1 -- Device 2 on layer 2
• Device 2 -- Device 3 on layer 2

In this case, Netreo would remove the layer 3 Device 1 -- Device 3 connection, and keep only the layer 2 connections that illustrate the proper parent/child hierarchy for these devices. These parent/child relationships between devices can be viewed on the Topology tab of the Site Dashboard for the site that contains these devices, or for an individual managed device, on the Topology tab of its Device Dashboard.

Manual Parenting

Parent/child relationships can be manually configured on the Parent Configuration page (Administration > Parenting > Change).

To manually configure parent/child relationships, select the desired parent device(s) in the Parent panel, select the desired child device(s) in the Child panel, select the desired parenting mode, and select Save Change.

When manually setting parent/child relationships using this option, a flag is set in Netreo for each device involved, indicating that they have been manually configured. This flag prevents the auto-parent scan from changing any parent/child relationships configured by a user.

If you want to remove manually configured parent/child relationships for a device so that the auto-parent scan can configure those relationships; select the devices to remove manual configuration from in the Child panel, clear any devices in the Parent panel, select Delete all parents for these children and replace with selected as the parenting option and select Save Change. The manual parenting flag for each selected device is reset, and auto-parenting can again be performed on them.

Best Practices

Parenting must always be configured from the perspective of where the Netreo server is located on the network.

Ensuring that all of your managed devices have proper parenting configured allows the network topology to be displayed visually on the network topology map and on the Topology tab of the Device Dashboard for each device.