3. Atrium Discovery usernames, passwords, community strings logs in, runs commands stores collected data in the datastore as “Directly Discovered Data” (DDD) credential vault Your IT estate discovery process 1 2 3 datastore
4.
5. Windows Discovery – Credential Slave usernames, passwords Connects to estate with supplied username/password Delegates discovery to Windows slave Your IT estate discovery process 1 3 credential vault Credential Slave 2
6. Windows Discovery – AD/Workgroup Slave Connects to the estate using the slave’s Windows Service account Delegates discovery to the slave Your IT estate discovery process 2 AD/Workgroup Slave 1
7. Atrium Discovery Reasoning Platform Discovery stores DDD in the datastore Reasoning applies patterns to DDD Inferred data is written back to the datastore Patterns make inferences discovery process 1 datastore reasoning platform 2 patterns 4 3
8. Inferred Data Hosts Business Applications The reasoning platform infers the presence of hosts, software instances and business applications from the DDD Directly Discovered Data Software Instances
This presentation gives you an overview of how BMC Atrium Discovery works.
One of BMC Atrium Discoverys key differentiators is the fact that we use an object mesh database. From here on we'll refer to this database as the data store. Its important because the data we need to store represents the real world which is complex, interconnected and changing all the time. each object stored represents a real thing. The datastore can be extended on the fly and is great at representing the dynamic and changing relationships between all the objects we discover. We are often asked why we don't use a relational database, well for the user its poor choice because the data is represented in a way that is not natural, the database is harder to extend and its very hard to make sense of the data where complex relationships are important .
Lets take a look at the logical end to end process of discovery. We begin by securing credentials on the appliance in what's known as the credential vault. These crednetials are used to log into the hosts in various ways for example SSH, Telnet, WMI and SNMP. The discovery process then logs onto hosts and executes commands. The collected data is stored in the datastore as directly discovered data or DDD.
Windows discovery takes a slightly different approach as we require an external service running on a dedicated windows server to log into and scan all other Windows hosts within the estate. Typically the Windows server running the discovery slave is administered and maintained by the customer. Credentials are handled slightly different as well. There three different discovery slave types: Credential slaves which hold credentials within the credential vault. And Active Directory and Workgroup slaves which runs the slave service as the user that can gain access to the target windows hosts.
Here we see a similar diagram to the one we looked at earlier. It highlights the fact that the Windows credential slave relies on credentials stored in the credential vault on the BMC Atrium Discovery appliance. When the appliance discovers a Windows host it delegates the discovery task to the Windows discovery slave. The discovery slave then goes off and logs into the target host and runs the necessary discovery commands.
Active Directory and the Workgroup slave hold credentials on the server running the discovery slave service. So here we see the same discovery process but the credentials are no longer stored within the credential vault.
We've described the fact that data discovered by Atrium Discovery returns to the appliance in the form of directly discovered data or DDD. This process of adding DDD to the datastore triggers events within the Reasoning Platform. The Reasoning Platform has access to a set of patterns. each pattern is a chunk of knowledge about something in particular. For example: Let's say we discover a host that is running a process called "MySQLD" we can then work out that its running an instance of MySQL Server. Executing the MySQL executable with command line switch of "version" will give you the version number. The original discovery data plus the new data received from the pattern is all written to the datastore as DDD.
At the bottom of this diagram we have our directly discovered data. As DDD is written to the datastore the Reasoning Engine uses rules to infer hosts and patterns to infer software instances and business applications. Simply put the reasoning engine converts data into information in the form of inferred data.
The patterns that we have been referring to are powerful but they are also flexible. BMC will release new patterns on a monthly basis. You can also create your own custom patterns to extend discovery, or to find bespoke software running within your environment. It is also possible to write patterns to query databases
Data written to the datastore is instantly indexed allowing the user to quickly search for items of interest. Atrium Discovery's keyword search means that is not always necessary to know exactly what you are searching for.
Along with keyword search, dashboards and reports provide jumping off points for data analysis and exploration. Result lists include powerful navigation like sorting, filtering, visualization and charts. All data including provenance is available for analysis.
![Atrium Object-Mesh Database ,[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)