What is a Probe?

Probes are the link between your environment and the Canopy Manage software. A probe will discover and monitor the devices you wish to manage within your environment and communicate the information back to Canopy Manage for you to carry out your management and monitoring functions. 

Probes are either Hardened Linux Image or Windows Service devices that can be either virtual or physical, that run through the client’s data center. 

Probes will then acquire the relevant data to be sent to and processed by Canopy Manage. Our probes use Azure SignalR to provide real-time information and communicate via SSL (HTTPS) with a token exchange to be as secure as possible. 

Where are Probes Located in Canopy Manage?

All the information for probes can be found in the Probes page accessed by clicking on this icon on the left side navigation bar.

Probes Page

The Probes page is where you can find all the information for the various probes installed with Canopy Manage. Here, you can see:

  • Counters displaying the general information of how many probes there are, how many are online and how many assets they are detecting (2).
  • A detailed list of probes, that can be sorted by their status, their plugins installed or by searching by name (3). 
  •  A list of Active probes (4), including information on  
    • Probe name 
    • Online status (indicated by a green circle for online and greyed out if offline) 
    • IP address - Number of assets 
    • SDK version 

To register a new probe, click the blue ‘Register Probe’ button in the top right (1). To access more information on a specific probe you can select the blue highlighted name to view it.

Probe Information

The Probe Information page provides specific information about a probe. It is accessed by clicking the blue highlighted name in the probes list.

This page includes:

  • Probe name (1) 
  • Status Widget (2), which includes information about 
    • DNS info
    • Internal and external IP 
  • Assets Widget (3), listing the number of assets currently discovered by the probe 
  • Available updates (4) 

As well as an Updates Widget (5), that shows the plugins installation status, name, description and version number. 

The Plugins list also has a button for installing a plugin as well as one for manipulating specific installed plugins. Click the blue ‘Install’ button to install a plugin or click the ellipsis to open a menu showing the options for upgrading the plugin or to view the plugin settings.

Registering New Probes and Updating Probes

This menu pops up when you select the "Register Probe" button. Simply copy the URL shown by clicking the blue "Copy" button and paste it into the probe you wish to register. Canopy Manage will continually scan until it detects the registration URL and then will register that probe.

This menu pops up when you select the ‘Upgrade Plugin’ option on an installed Plugin. Simply select the version you wish on the plugin with the drop-down box, then select the blue ‘Modify’ button and the Plugin will be modified.

vCenter Probes

When using a vCentre the probe needs at minimum read-only access to the API. You will need to add extra permissions if you plan on using management actions such as restarting a VM. The probe connects to the vCentre API and requests a list of all connected assets which are returned to Canopy Manage. 

Plugin Settings

Some plugins will come with editable settings that can be accessed with the ellipsis on the Probes Information page. Thresholds, warnings and other settings can be edited in this menu. Here is an example of a settings page for a “Jabra” plugin (however settings will vary depending on plugin). Click the blue ‘Save’ button when you are satisfied with your setting changes.

Troubleshooting

Why is my probe showing as offline?

Check the Windows Services Management Console to make sure the Canopy Management Probe is running.