Refine Application Discovery

Refining discovery is the process of optimizing agent and template configurations to enrich data display in Application Discovery.

How Discovery Works

Application Discovery includes a set of application templates that cover a spectrum of typical application types expected to be found on systems operating within a network or data center. A template is a set of rules that defines the matching criteria for the processes that constitute an application. This default set of templates allows Application Discovery to find, identify, and display information for a significant percentage of installed packages and running applications and processes.

On any one system, a percentage of processes found to be active on a host might not be matched to a provided template or a discovered package. These are referred to as unmatched processes. Of these unmatched processes, some may reflect the presence of custom or third-party software.

Application Discovery helps you to refine discovery in the following ways:

It provides a summary view into total discovery across your data center or network.
It provides a list of candidate servers and indicates whether or not they have Application Discovery agents running or installed for discovery.
It provides a way to edit existing application templates and create new ones. When you modify or add templates to better adapt them to your environment, you refine the ability of Application Discovery to report application behavior in your particular network.




	TIP: At times, you might simply need to find where an application is running or installed. For this information, click the Applications tab to browse current data.

Understand Your Current Discovery State

To view the current state of discovery, click the Admin/Config tab, and then the Discovery tab.

Discovery Ratio

From the Discovery tab, you can see the discovery ratio for each system running an Application Discovery agent, as well as the total discovery of processes and packages for all monitored systems. Use this information to help determine where to expend effort to improve discovery.

Figure 3-10 shows a segment of process inventory data.

Figure 3-10 Segment of Process Inventory Data

For example, if the discovery ratio is low, the number of processes that Application Discovery is matching to templates is low. Because more data can be gathered from known relationships, a low ratio indicates that much less can be known and displayed for the processes that are using resources on that host.

Conversely, if the discovery ratio is high, Application Discovery can provide extensive amounts of data on system behavior. This information is a richer source for informed decision-making about resource allocation.

Warm-up Ratio

The warm-up ratio indicates the degree to which the Application Discovery agent has completed an initial survey of packages on a host. Processes that are eventually associated with a package are listed as unmatched processes until the packages are completely catalogued.

A warm-up ratio of 100% indicates that an initial survey of packages has been completed since the last startup of the host. A ratio of less than 100% indicates that the agent might still be in the process of cataloguing and displaying packages present on the host. It might also indicate that a problem exists in the Application Discovery agent/Application Discovery server communication.

Figure 3-11 shows a segment of package inventory data.

Figure 3-11 Segment of Package Inventory Data

Once you understand the current state of discovery on a host or across a network, you can improve the quality of discovery. The next few sections discuss ways to refine discovery.

Refine Discovery by Checking Agent State

Application Discovery provides information about the operation of its agents so that you can make decisions about where and when to use them, and so that you can know the state of their health.

To learn about agent status, follow the process for checking agent state as described in the following section.

The information provided can help you decide if you want to do one or more of the following:

Install an Application Discovery agent in order to monitor processes and applications on that host. See VSE Management Software: Installation and Update Guide for instructions.
Start an agent on a system where the agent is installed, but not running.
Modify the behavior of an agent on a system to affect data freshness and retain history.

Explanation of Agent State

Table 3-1 shows the possible values for agent state.

Table 3-1 Possible Values for Agent State

Value	Meaning
`Connected`	Installed, daemon running, connected; able to transfer data
`Disconnected`	Installed, daemon running, disconnected; unable to transfer data
`Agent not running`	Installed, daemon not running; unable to collect data
`No CMS Cert`	No certificates exchanged between Application Discovery server and agent; unable to complete data transfer
`Agent not installed`	Connected to target system; no agent found
`No contact`	The server cannot connect to the target system. The target system may be down or not configured for remote command execution from HP SIM.

Refine Discovery by Creating Application Templates

Application Discovery is shipped with a set of default templates that it uses to discover applications that are likely to be present within an extensive network or data center. These templates can be copied and edited to quickly create new, similar templates, or you can create a completely new template that contains no predetermined settings. To see your current list of templates, click the Admin/Config tab, then the AD Templates tab.

To define an application, you can do the following:

Edit an existing template to better define the application to which it applies.
Copy an existing template and modify it to collect a new set of unmatched processes into an application.
Create a new template to collect a set of unmatched processes into an application.

See the section on “Managing Application Templates” for instructions on creating and editing templates.

Refine Application Discovery

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