Consolidation refers to the centralization of discovery data from scheduled or snapshot scans on multiple Scanning appliances to one or more Consolidation appliances. There are a number of situations in which you may want to use consolidation:

• Firewalled environments – where an environment is divided by firewalls so that a single appliance is unable to reach all parts, a scanning appliance can be situated on each section of the network blocked by a firewall. The scanning appliances can all feed back data to a central consolidation appliance.
• Restricted (policy) networks – certain lines of business may enforce policies on the control of IT infrastructure in their environments. Where such policies limit or prohibit access, scanning appliances may be deployed which all feed back data to a central consolidation appliance.
• Restricted (time) scanning windows – where a discovery window is short, a single appliance may be unable to complete a scan of a large range of IP addresses during the time permitted. Sharing the IP addresses between multiple scanning appliances means each smaller scan can be completed in less time, and the results consolidated and viewed on the consolidation appliance.

In each of these situations multiple scanning appliances can be deployed, and their data consolidated into a central consolidation appliance. The consolidation appliance is then used for reporting and provides a coherent view of the entire scanned network. A consolidation appliance must be set as one which accepts connections/feeds from scanning appliances. Scanning appliances must in turn register with a consolidation appliance.

Consolidation Appliance – The consolidation appliance is mainly concerned with reporting on data consolidated from a number of other scanning appliances. It can also perform "normal" discovery, although this is not recommended.
Scanning Appliance – The scanning appliance operates as a "normal" standalone appliance. The only difference is that it constantly sends discovery data to the consolidation appliance. After setting up, this process is transparent to the user. A scanning appliance must request and be approved on a consolidation appliance before it can send any consolidation data to that appliance. This is described below.

On the consolidation appliance UI, the Discovery Current Runs tab shows any local scans and any consolidation runs in progress. The Current Runs tab is described in The Discovery Status page. The tab is shown below:

Configuring Consolidation

Configuring consolidation is a two step procedure. Initially the appliance which is to be the consolidation appliance must be set as a consolidation appliance, and then one or more scanning appliances register with the appliance. To configure consolidation you need the permissions detailed in Consolidation Permissions.

Patterns and consolidation The patterns that are loaded on the scanning and consolidation appliances must be the same in order to get the same results. This is not enforced in any way by the system.

Firewalls and consolidation Consolidated appliances use port 25032 to communicate. The scanning appliance must be able to connect to port 25032 on the consolidation appliance. You must configure any firewalls between scanning appliances and consolidation appliances to allow this traffic.

Setting an Appliance as a Consolidation Appliance

To set an appliance as a consolidation appliance:

1. From the Discovery section of the Administration tab, select Discovery Consolidation. The Consolidation page is displayed.
   
   You cannot use consolidation if the appliance is named Tideway. The following warning is displayed including a link to where you can change the appliance name.
   
   
2. In the Consolidation page, click the Set as Consolidation Appliance Button.
   The appliance is now configured as a consolidation appliance.
   
   

Setting an Appliance as a Scanning Appliance

To set an appliance as a scanning appliance:

1. From the Discovery section of the Administration tab, select Discovery Consolidation. The Consolidation page is displayed.
   
   
2. In the Consolidation page, click the Set as Scanning Appliance Button.
   The Add New Consolidation dialog is displayed.
   
   This dialog enables you to specify a Consolidation target. Enter or edit the following information in the dialog:
   

   Field Name	Details
   Name	The name of the scanning appliance. Names must be unique in the consolidation network and you cannot consolidate a scanning appliance with the default name, Tideway. The name is taken from the Administration > Appliance Configuration > Identification page. See Initial Appliance Configuration. A change link is provided which displays the Identification page. In the identification page you can change the name of the appliance. You can only consolidate appliances which have unique names.
   Consolidation Appliance	The IP address or the hostname of the target consolidation appliance.
   Note:	You can supply credentials for the consolidation appliance in this dialog. If you supply valid credentials here, the scanning appliance is approved automatically.
   Username	The username for a user on the consolidation appliance. This user must have appropriate permissions to approve the connection of the scanning appliance to the consolidation appliance.
   Password	The password for the user on the consolidation appliance.

   
   If you supplied valid credentials for automatic approval on the consolidation appliance, then the scanning appliance is now configured and working as a scanning appliance.
   
   

Approving or Rejecting a Scanning Appliance Request

Once a request (without automatic approval) has been made from a scanning appliance, it requires approval on the consolidation appliance.

To approve or reject a pending scanning appliance request:

1. From the Administration tab on the consolidation appliance, select Discovery Consolidation from the Discovery section. The Consolidation window is shown.
   
   In the figure above, the "Tideway05" appliance has requested to become a scanning appliance.
   • Click the Approve button to accept the appliance connection.
     
     
   • Click the Reject button to reject the request. When you do this, the connection is deleted from the consolidation appliance and when no connections remain the scanning appliance reverts back to a non-consolidated appliance.
     
     

When Consolidation is Running

Once consolidation has been set up, whatever scanning takes place on the scanning appliance is automatically sent to the consolidation appliance as soon as possible after the scan of an endpoint is complete. On the consolidation appliance, runs are displayed that are marked specifically as consolidation runs and can be viewed from the Discovery Status page.

Discovery must be running on the consolidation appliance for consolidation to take place. If Discovery is not running, the consolidation appliance will refuse to accept data from the scanning appliance. The scanning appliance will attempt to resend data later. Also, if Discovery is stopped on the consolidation appliance, it will stop consolidating any data it has already received.

Cancellation of Consolidating Discovery Runs

You can cancel a consolidating discovery run from the scanning appliance or from the consolidation appliance. Where possible you should always cancel the discovery run on the scanning appliance. This is done by selecting the discovery run on the Discovery Status page of the scanning appliance and clicking the Cancel Runs button.

Cancelling the discovery run at the scanning appliance enables the consolidation appliance to receive data from the scanning appliance. This stops the scan rather than the consolidation so that the two appliances' data remains consistent.

Cancelling a Consolidation Run on the consolidation appliance stops the consolidation though the scan continues on the scanning appliance. This leads to inconsistencies between the data on the two appliances. Where possible you should always stop the scan on the scanning appliance and allow the consolidation to run to completion.

If you must cancel a consolidation run from the consolidation appliance, you can do so by selecting the discovery run on the Discovery Status page of the consolidation appliance and clicking the Cancel Runs button.