Discovery exclusions let you keep specific assets out of your Lansweeper inventory. Instead of letting noise accumulate from test machines, firewalled IPs, or devices managed by another team, you define an exclusion rule once and Lansweeper applies it automatically across your Network Discovery hubs and IT Agents.
What are discovery exclusions?
Discovery exclusions are rules that prevent unwanted assets from ever entering your inventory. You can exclude assets by IP address range, hostname or FQDN, domain pattern, MAC address pattern, or asset type.
Exclusion types
There are 5 exclusion types:
| Exclusion type | How to define |
|---|---|
| IP address range | A specific IP address, an IP range, or CIDR notation |
| Hostname or FQDN | A text value, with optional wildcard patterns |
| Domain pattern | A text value, with optional wildcard patterns |
| MAC address pattern | A text value, with optional wildcard patterns |
| Asset type | One or more types selected from the asset type catalog |
Pattern matching for text-based exclusions
The Hostname/FQDN, domain, and MAC address exclusions support wildcard patterns using *:
| Pattern | Matches |
|---|---|
XYZ |
An exact match |
*XYZ |
Anything ending with XYZ |
XYZ* |
Anything starting with XYZ |
*XYZ* |
Anything containing XYZ |
IP address range exclusions don't use these patterns. Enter a specific IP, an IP range, or CIDR notation instead. Asset type exclusions don't use patterns either. Instead, you select types from a list.
How exclusions behave
Not every exclusion type applies to the Lansweeper Classic scanner the same way it applies to Network Discovery.
| Exclusion type | Applies to Network Discovery | Applies to Classic scanner |
|---|---|---|
| IP address range | ✔ Yes (enforced at hub level) | ✘ No |
| MAC address pattern | ✔ Yes (enforced at hub level) | ✘ No |
| Domain pattern | ✔ Yes (enforced at hub level) | ✘ No |
| Hostname or FQDN | ✔ Yes (enforced at hub level) | ✘ No |
| Asset type | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes (applies to the whole inventory) |
Why asset type exclusions are different
IP address range, hostname/FQDN, domain pattern, and MAC address exclusions are applied at scan time: Lansweeper checks the rule before scanning, so a matching device is never scanned at all.
Asset type is the exception. Lansweeper can only apply this exclusion after it has already recognized the asset, since the type isn't known beforehand. That's also why asset type is the only exclusion type that reaches your whole inventory, including IT Agent discovery and the Lansweeper Classic scanner: by the time recognition happens, Lansweeper no longer knows which scanner found the asset. This is a side effect of the reconciliation engine, which merges records from every discovery source into one asset before this check runs.
Create a discovery exclusion
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In your site, go to Discovery > Exclusions.
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Select Add exclusion.
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Enter a name for the exclusion.
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Select a reason for the exclusion.
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Select the exclusion type: IP address range, Hostname or FQDN, Domain pattern, MAC address pattern, or Asset type.
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Enter the target values for the selected type:
- IP address range: enter one or more specific IP addresses, IP ranges, or CIDR blocks.
- Hostname or FQDN, Domain pattern, or MAC address pattern: enter one or more values. Use the wildcard patterns above to match more than one target.
- Asset type: select asset types from the catalog.
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Select Create.
New exclusions take effect on the next scan cycle.
Manage existing exclusions
The exclusions list shows every rule with its Name, Type, Reason, and Excluded value. Sort or search by name to find a specific rule.
You can select an exclusion to edit the rule, or select Delete to delete the exclusion.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
What is not covered by discovery exclusions?
Discovery exclusions apply to Network Discovery and IT Agent discovery only. Cloud Sensor discovers assets through cloud provider APIs, so IP, hostname, domain, and MAC address exclusions don't apply to it. To filter cloud resources, configure include/exclude rules directly in the Cloud Action settings.
IP address range, hostname/FQDN, domain pattern, and MAC address exclusions also don't apply to the Lansweeper Classic scanner. To exclude assets from Classic scanning, see Exclude assets from scanning in the Lansweeper Classic documentation.
Manually added assets aren't affected by exclusion rules. Since you added them yourself, Lansweeper assumes you want them in your inventory.
How can I scope exclusions to specific systems?
Today, every exclusion applies site-wide: to all hubs, or in the case of asset type, to all hubs and IT Agents. Support for scoping an exclusion to a specific hub, IT Agent, or group is planned, so you could, for example, exclude an IP range from one OT sensor without affecting the rest of your hubs. This isn't available yet.