Just had the opportunity to give the HTTP Classifier (London build+) a test drive with some friends that needed to discover some specific devices.

For years I've had challenges with requests for iLO Discovery because of the nature of the device passing through (SNMP) request to the server it was on rather than answering for itself. But now I had the opportunity to actually build a "catch" based on an HTTP(S) response and trigger a pattern to do the rest of the work and it couldn't have been easier.

You can match on any bit on the return, very similar to the OOB F5 classifier (value) does.

In my case, I used other values (obviously) but now that I had the power to trigger a pattern that could then query other directories that the API had to offer and the process takes it from there. If I had this available back when IP Phone discovery was all the rage we wouldn't have needed this excellent update set from our friend Valor Poland, because back then I could see the phone's status (web) page but we didn't have a way to do anything with it. Let alone having to authenticate through it...Now that we have this, life is much easier...

One important thing I learned was that the HTTP Classifier probe requires at least one 'Basic auth' credential loaded, even if you are only using HTTP and not HTTPS. I'm not sure if this is a bug or an undocumented "feature" (I've notified the responsible parties, so this might change (either in code or documentation) but if you are going down this route and aren't getting a response from the HTTP Classifier probe then double check that.

DO know I got this idea from a coworker who used this to trigger storage systems patterns so his friends didn't have to enable SNMP to trigger the same pattern. In his case, he used an alternate port (!= 80,443) so like him, know you can set up another port in Discovery Definition > IP Services. Include it on the HTTP port probe (triggered by services) the new port check in your Discovery Definition > port probes for your Configuration Item Discoveries. Include it in the Discovery Definition > Functionality Definition > ALL so when you do quick discoveries you're checking that port. Then add it of course, to your new HTTP classifier...

Bottom line, if you have a device that you need to discover and only have HTTP(S) as an available protocol whos 'GET' can provide quality information then this is a great way to go! Overall I saved my friends from having to configure credentials for other available protocols (SSH) on thousands of systems when their base HTTP call gave us everything we needed to create, identify and relate the records. I am liking this HTTP Classifier....