View and Validate Discovered Topology

Updated: March 3, 2016

Applies To: Windows Server Technical Preview

You can use this topic to view and validate the discovered topology.

This topic contains the following sections.

• View the Discovered Topology

• Validate the Discovered Topology

View the Discovered Topology

After network discovery is completed, you can view the discovered topology by using the following Windows PowerShell command.

Get-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopology -ConnectionUri https://networkcontroller

The following example output provides the discoveredTopology resource.

ResourceRef      : /topologies/discoveredTopology/
InstanceId       : 4ccfe813-6c7d-4580-8dc9-149c2d422353
Etag             : 
ResourceMetadata :
ResourceId       :
Properties       : Microsoft.Windows.NetworkController.DiscoveredTopologyProperties

When you display the properties of discoveredTopology, you can view discovered topology nodes and links. Only the resource IDs are shown. You can also display the discovered properties of topology nodes and links, as shown in the following examples.

$topology=Get-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopology -ConnectionUri https://networkcontroller
$topology.Properties

Provisioning State   Topology Nodes                                                                   TopologyLinks
------------------   --------------                                                                   ------------- 
Succeeded            {fc284b32-38ba-47d2-a67a-6443d3938bb1, f5bbde7a-649c-4aa2-ac97-28dadc02b017,...} {8de645ab-1380-45ac-82a8-ee7f8f4e9584,ff5c5fea-0527-4011-83a8-de0bf4b121d9,...}

$topology=Get-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopology -ConnectionUri https://networkcontroller
$topology.Properties.TopologyNodes[0].Properties
Name               : DC 
OS                 : 
Model              :
Vendor             :
Serial             :
IsHidden           : False
Type               : Switch
IsManuallyAdded    : False
ProvisioningState  : Succeeded
TerminationPoints  : {04dce30a-d031-43ab-b516-7844550ee574, b26471f4-df07-49bb-a494-cf5547cc0c4c, 5c53cc33-53e5-4d64-b12e-3dce407bcbe5}

$topology=Get-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopology -ConnectionUri https://networkcontroller
$topology.Properties.TopologyLinks[0].Properties

Type              : Regular
Label             :
AggregateId       :
IsManuallyAdded   : False
IsHidden          : False
ProvisioningState : Succeded
Terminationpoint1 : Microsoft.Windows.NetworkController.DiscoveredTerminationPoint
Terminationpoint2 : Microsoft.Windows.NetworkController.DiscoveredTerminationPoint

You can use the following Windows PowerShell commands to get the topology nodes, links, and termination points based on the resource IDs.

Get-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopologyLink
Get-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopologyNode
Get-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTerminationpoint

Validate the Discovered Topology

After performing Network Discovery, you can validate the discovered topology against the actual topology of your network. If you discover differences between the actual and discovered topologies, you can make changes to your network until network discovery results match the actual topology.

For example, if a link between two topology nodes does not appear in the discovery topology, but the link exists in the actual topology of the network, this might indicate a cabling error. If this is the case, you can fix the cabling error, then run Network Discovery again to ensure that the actual topology and discovery topology match.

In another example, if the discovered topology shows a particular VLAN on a switch port, while the actual topology shows a different VLAN, you can go ahead and correct the VLAN on the switch port. Then you can run Network Discovery again to ensure the topologies match.

In most cases you will want to keep a record of your actual topology. You can manage the record of your actual topology manually, or you can input the topology to Network Controller. For more information on using Network Controller to manage your actual topology, see the topic Build the Actual Topology in Network Controller.

There are times when Network Discovery might not discover some network elements. If you develop scripts or tools to compare the discovered topology against the actual topology, in some cases, you might not want the comparison logic of the tool or script to always report network elements that are not discoverable by Network Controller. Instead, your script or tool can ignore these elements when it displays the differences between the discovered and the actual topology. If you do not want the same “undiscovered element” to keep showing up in all discovery runs, you can just manually add the element to the discovered topology. Manually added elements in the discovered topology are visible in subsequent discovery runs.

Conversely, there may be circumstances where Network Discovery discovers an element that is not present in the actual topology. You can choose to hide these elements by setting the IsHidden flag. After you apply this flag to an element, the element is not displayed in the discovery topology. Because of this, any script or tool that compares the discovered and the actual topology does not show these differences. Hidden elements remain hidden in subsequent discovery runs.

To add or edit topology nodes, termination points, and topology links, you can use the following Windows PowerShell commands.

New-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopologyLink
New-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopologyNode
New-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTerminationpoint

To remove manually added topology nodes, termination points, and topology links, you can use the following Windows PowerShell commands.

Remove-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopologyLink
Remove-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTopologyNode
Remove-NetworkControllerDiscoveredTerminationpoint

To learn more about Network Discovery statistics, see View Network Discovery Statistics.

See Also

Network Discovery and Topology