7 min
Domotz Onboarding Guide: Setting up Domotz within your Free Trial Period
Purpose of the Domotz Onboarding Guide
The Domotz Onboarding Guide on how to get started with Domotz, will help you deploy Domotz in your first network as quickly and efficiently as possible, with the purpose of evaluating the Domotz service during the trial period (POC).
Once deployed you will be able to:
- Discover all the devices on your network
- Get a network topology
- Create/Manage Alerts on your network devices
- Connect remotely on your devices without the need of opening ports on your router or install specific software on them
Note that this article on how to get started with Domotz focuses on quick set-up for testing purposes during the trial phase. It assumes the account owner is configuring the system and no team members are added. We hope you enjoy the Domotz Onboarding Guide!
How Domotz Works
To start off with how to get started with Domotz, it’s important to know what we do. Domotz is a cloud-based service that continuously and securely communicates with a network agent. The cloud service is where information about the network you are monitoring is stored and accessed. Accessing your network information is doing through the Domotz application, which can be hosted on Windows or Mac OS, as well as your favorite web browser, or even iOS and Android mobile devices.
As a cloud-based service, you will need to create an account first. Secondly, you will need to install an agent on the network that you wish to monitor. The last step will be to configure the application and agent so that you can take advantage of all the features Domotz has to offer.
How to get Started with Domotz
Step 1) Domotz Account Creation
Go to https://portal.domotz.com/signup and fill in the mandatory fields. You will need to provide an email address, which will serve as your login. You will also need to secure your account with a strong password.
To help provide the best experience, be sure to provide your name and contact information, as well your company and market you primarily serve. This helps ensure that we provide you with the best possible support based on your needs.
At this point, your account has been created. You will automatically be logged into your Domotz portal. Note you can always get back here by going to portal.domotz.com.
You will notice that you now need to take the next step and install your Domotz Agent.
Step 2) Installing your Domotz Agent
The Domotz agent is a network-based agent. Some users like to think of this agent as a collector or probe. The Domotz agent receives commands from the Domotz cloud service to scan, monitor and connect to systems on the network. It is important to note that this agent will scan the network that it is associated to, for instance, if you install the Windows agent on a PC, the agent will scan the network(s) where the Windows PC is currently attached.
After clicking “Start Free Trial” you will be redirected to the following page where you will be able to download your Agent. Choose your system and follow the instructions.
For simplicity, this guide will go through the process of installing the Windows Agent. Instructions for installed other agent types are made available on the “Add New Agent” page within portal.domotz.com.
Windows Agent Installation
- Click on the “Download Now” link
- Install the downloaded file and follow the Domotz Agent Setup wizard:
After installation and starting the Domotz agent, you need to associate the Domotz Agent to your Domotz cloud account. The Domotz agent can be accessed through port 3000 on the host where you installed it. The installation process should open a browser window automatically and direct you to port 3000.
Important note: if after installing the agent, a new browser tab does not automatically open, please open one and go to http://127.0.0.1:3000 and log in to your account.
Once you are on the Domotz agent page, you will need to add your username and password, which you created in step 1. This process associates your agent to your cloud account.
Qualify your first agent name and click “Activate now for free”:
After activating it, your Domotz agent with start to scan your network.
Step 3) Working with the Domotz Application
Device Discovery
Upon activation, the Domotz agent will immediately start scanning the network for which it is associated. Please wait a few minutes for a complete scan to occur. The time it takes depends heavily on the size of the network and the number of devices on that network.
Once the initial scanning is complete, you can click the “Devices List” button which will show you all the devices that Domotz has discovered:
After discovering your devices, you might see an orange bar at the top of your screen saying:
<< It looks like there may be network delays. If the problem persists contact Domotz support>>
This means that the Domotz Agent is not able to reach the Domotz Cloud correctly and so it is not able to work properly.
To solve this issue you might check this article: https://help.domotz.com/tips-tricks/unblock-outgoing-connections-on-firewall/
Setting up SNMP on Network Managed Switches
In order to be able to view your site Network Topology map, you need to enable SNMP on all your managed switches.
Each brand/model has a specific way to set this up, but it is normally done through the device’s web-based graphic user interface, or from command line.
Note: If you do not have local access to the managed switch configuration interface, you may be able to use Domotz Remote connections to connect to each device (using HTTP or SSH) in order to configure them.
Important note: By default, Domotz will try to use SNMP v2c with “Public/Private” as the community strings. If you used SNMP v1, v3 or have configured custom community strings, please see here how to add it to Domotz:
https://help.domotz.com/user-guide/how-to-set-custom-snmp-credentials-in-domotz/
View Topology Map
After enabling SNMP for each Managed Switch and if your managed switches are RFC4188 compliant and/or LLDP compliant, Domotz will be able to create your site’s Network Topology Map. This can take several hours depending on the complexity of the network.
For more information on Domotz Network Topology, please see this kb article:
https://help.domotz.com/user-guide/network-topology/
Switch Port Traffic and PoE capabilities
Also, using SNMP data, Domotz can collect detailed information on each port within the managed switch, so you can monitor the site’s network traffic:
And if you are using a PoE Switch you will be able to monitor and control power to each port:
Enabling SNMP on other types of devices, such as Printers, NAS, and UPS will allow you to add Domotz Pre-configured sensors to them to monitor them.
You will find the pre-configured sensors available under the SNMP tab within each device as appropriate.
Please see this kb article for further information on this subject: https://help.domotz.com/user-guide/pre-configured-snmp-sensors/
Setting up your Domotz Alerts
It is likely that one of the main reasons you are onboarding Domotz is so that you can receive notifications (alerts) when something is not working as expected on your network.
Domotz has two different ways send alerts, the “Personal Alerts” and “Shared Alerts”.
The main difference between the two is that the Personal Alerts are user based and support email and Domotz mobile app push notifications, while the Shared Alerts are team based and support a variety of ticketing system, as well as email, and webhooks.
For the purpose of quickly setting up a Domotz agent during your trial, we will first focus on personal alerts.
You may find more information about the difference between the two and how to configure them here: https://help.domotz.com/user-guide/device-alerts/
Monitoring your Domotz Agent
Domotz, by default, does not automatically enabled alerts, therefore, you should consider setting up your first alert to monitor your Domotz agent status.
To do that please enter the “Alert Settings” section in your agent:
Under the “Network” section select “Personal Alerts” and check the “Email” checkbox:
With this alert set-up you’ll get email notifications (the email you log on with) when your agent falls offline. Additionally, you’ll get alerts when it recovers from being offline.
This Connection Event, is an indication that the Domotz agent on the Local Area Network is no longer communicating with the Domotz cloud service. Therefore, this is a must-to-have alert if you want to be notified if at least one of the following events happen:
– Issues at the ISP level
– Modem issue
– Router issue
– DNS issue (e.g. the Domotz Agent is not able to resolve anymore Domotz cloud endpoints)
– Issues on the hardware hosting the Domotz Agent
As a matter of fact, setting up an Alert on the status of the “device” hosting the Domotz Agent does not trigger any notification (because when the Domotz Agent is not able to communicate to the Domotz Cloud, the status of “devices” is not updated).
Monitoring a Specific Device
Adopting the same approach, you can define Personal Alerts on a specific device and then “export” you alert configuration on other devices.
After selecting on device from Domotz device list, inside the “Alerts” tab, you will be able to choose between two alerts profiles: the Standard and the Custom one.
The Standard profile allows you to monitor “basic” Device Status events:
The Custom profile, instead, allows you to apply alerts on as SNMP sensors and TCP Services:
And also, it allows you to monitor device network performance by checking its RTD (Round trip delay):
Once you’ve set up the alerts section for one device you can export its alerts configuration to other devices for monitoring them in the same way.
For more details on how to do this, please check this link:
https://help.domotz.com/user-guide/search-manage/#htoc-export-import-device-settings-and-properties
Creating a Remote Connection
Finally it is worth to mention that you can remotely connect to all discovered devices in your network which expose at least one open port (service) with which you can connect.
For simplicity, we will focus on making a simple, direct connection to a device’s webpage.
To see the list of those, please enter the “Remote Connection & VPN” section:
From this view you will be able to get a list of the available devices to which to can connect to, and also to search for the service you might need, based on service protocol, or device properties (Name, IP Address, MAC Address, Model, Location, and Zone):
And after clicking on the “Connect” button you’ll get a redirect to the device login (in this case a web interface, since we clicked on port 80 of this security camera):
For more information about Remote Connections you might check this kb article:
https://help.domotz.com/user-guide/remote-connection-https-rdp-telnet-ssh-tcp-tunnels/
We hope the Domotz Onboarding Guide was useful. Learn more about Domotz on the website and our blog.