Setting up autodiscovery for Mac systems

PMM and SCCM may have a misconfiguration that will result in the following symptoms:

• Parallels Network Discovery is not working.

• Mac systems are not discovered on my network.

• My Mac systems are discovered but show IP addresses instead of names.

  NOTE: Auto-discovery works by utilizing Nmap Port Scanner. 

There are few places where configuration is required to make sure that everything is set up properly.

• First of all, make sure that Parallels Network Discovery itself is enabled:

  

• Next we need to setup places where it will look for Macs in form of IP boundaries (subnets). We will configure allowed IP address boundaries:

  

• Specify the subnet where Macs are located in Network and Subnet mask fields. Additionally, make sure that Boundary is added to Boundary Group:

  

• Back in Discovery Methods, we need to set up actual target address range for Nmap to scan:

  Right-click Parallels Network Discovery and select Properties:

  

  NOTE: It is not recommended to change TCP ports unless you know what this field does. Nmap timing policy will control how aggressively Nmap will be sending requests in the same period of time.

• If you plan to discover Macs only, you need to specify the account name (and password) since Nmap process is checking ability to login into Mac resources over SSH when discovery is performed. Switch to Accounts tab and press Parallels Mac Client Push Installation Properties link:

  

• If you also want, you may configure the Enable automatic site-wide client push installation option for all Mac resources or specific collections. If this option is disabled, Macs will be added to SCCM devices but Parallels Mac Client will not be deployed to discovered devices:

  

• Add accounts which will be used to login into Macs during discovery process:

  

• Now, configure Nmap. It is a good idea to put the same settings as you did when configuring boundaries:

  

• Almost done. Now we need to tell Nmap when to scan for Macs. We will configure Schedule on the tab with the same name:

  

Now after the procedure runs, you can check if your Macs were added under devices:

If something is still not working right, you can find additional information on actual actions performed and their outcomes in C:\Windows\Logs\pma_discovery.log:

NOTE: in Parallels Mac Management 4.5, user account settings have been moved to the new Parallels Mac Client Push Installation Properties dialog, which is now used for both (AD and Network) discovery methods. For more information, please see the Configuring Parallels Mac Client Push Installation Properties section in the Parallels Mac Management for Microsoft SCCM Administrator’s Guide.