Discovery

Discovery finds computers, servers, printers, a variety of IP-enabled devices, and the applications that run on them. It can then update the CIs in your CMDB with the data it collects.

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There are two types of discovery:

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Horizontal discovery

Horizontal discovery is a technique that Discovery uses to scan your network, find computers and devices, and then populate the CMDB with the CIs it finds. Horizontal discovery does create direct relationships between CIs, such as a runs on relationship between an application CI and the actual computer CI that it runs on. Horizontal discovery is not aware of business services and does not create relationships between CIs based on the business service they are in.

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Top-down discovery

Top-down discovery is a technique that Service Mapping uses to find and maps CIs that are part of business services, such as an email service. For example, top-down discovery can map a website business service by showing the relationships between an Apache Tomcat web server service, a Windows server, and the MSSQL database that stores the data for the business service.

Typically, Service Mapping and Discovery work together to run horizontal discovery first to find CIs, and then top-down discovery to establish the relationships between business services that you need to know.