A network printer object in BMC Atrium Discovery represents any printer in an estate. Network printers are discovered using SNMP credentials. In earlier versions of BMC Atrium Discovery, when a scan classified an endpoint as a printer, Reasoning would abort the scan and mark the DiscoveryAccess result as Skipped (meaning that a printer is an unsupported device).

In the new version, the Reasoning rules continue the scan of a printer device if Discovery identifies a printer and the discovery results are obtained using SNMP. This enables additional printer details about ports and interfaces to be retrieved, and a Printer node can be created or updated.

Printer nodes behave similarly to other ManagedElement nodes like Host and NetworkDevice and support:

• Aging
• Endpoint identity change
• Rescan action
• Sync with CMDB action
• Test credential action

Printer discovery definitions can be added or modified in the same manner as NetworkDevices through a TKU.

To view a network printer

To view a printer, click the Printer icon in the Infrastructure Summary section of the Infrastructure tab and select a printer from the list.

A typical example of a discovered network printer is illustrated in the following screen.

The information fields for a discovered network device object are arranged in the following groups:

• General Details: General information on the network device such as its name, vendor, and model. See General Details below.
• Identity: Information on domain names and IP addresses. See Identity for details.
• Operating System: The Operating system information for the network printer. See Operating System for details.
• Infrastructure: Information on the services that the network printer provides. See Services for details.
• Inference: The inference details. See Inference for more information.

You can also display provenance information by clicking the Show Provenance button. Provenance information is meta-information describing how the other information became available. For more information, see Provenance Information.

General details

The full list of information fields which may be displayed in the General Details group for a network printer are described in the following table.

Identity

The full list of information fields that may be displayed in the Identity group for a network printer object are detailed in the following table.

Operating system

The full list of information fields that may be displayed in the Operating System group for a network device object are detailed in the following table.

Infrastructure

The full list of information fields that may be displayed in the Infrastructure group for a network printer object are detailed in the following table.

Inference

The full list of information fields which may be displayed in the Inference group for a network printer object are displayed in the following table.