VMware VCENTER APPLICATION DISCOVERY MANAGER User manual

P R O D U C T D A T A S H E E T / 1
AT A G L ANCE
VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager
(formerly EMC Ionix Application Discovery
Manager) provides the automated, real-time
application discovery and dependency mapping
capability you need to accelerate data center
moves, precisely plan infrastructure
consolidations, and confidently virtualize your
business critical applications.
B E N E F I T S
•Get and keep a fast and accurate data center
view – across virtual and physical
•Precise visibility into all application interactions
via network-based approach
•Eye-opening discovery of unknown, unwanted,
and unexpected application behaviors and
dependencies
•Before you make a change, understand all
infrastructure and application relationships
•Quick deployment and low-impact through
unique agentless technology
D A T A S H E E T
Passive, agentless dynamic discovery and mapping
vCenter Application Discovery Manager
Automated Application Dependency Mapping
What is vCenter
Application Discovery
Manager?
Application Discovery Manager is an enterprise datacenter
management solution that utilizes agentless, continuous
dependency mapping—across physical & virtual application
infrastructures—so you can quickly gain an understanding of
your service dependencies with unparalleled accuracy and
eciency. Whether you are moving a datacenter, virtualizing
applications, building a site recovery plan, or moving a service
to the cloud, an accurate application dependency map is an
essential first step.
How Is vCenter Application Discovery Manager Used?
Application Discovery Manager’s real-time, automated dependency
mapping allows enterprises to drive quick and accurate application
virtualization and datacenter blueprinting projects. It eliminates
reliance on “tribal knowledge” and guesswork, helps IT teams
avoid change-induced service outages, degradations, and failures,
and populates third-party or homegrown CMDBs or CMSs.
Accurately map dependencies before virtualizing applications
to fully understand existing dependencies and behaviors.
Quickly blueprint applications for datacenter consolidations,
moves, and DR plans to precisely plan infrastructure changes.
Eliminate reliance on tribal knowledge to eliminate guesswork
and understand the potential impact of a change before the
change is made .
Populate CMDBs to add accurate application dependency
relationships and keep discovery data current.
How Does vCenter Application Discovery
Manager Work?
Application Discovery Manager is the only application dependency
mapping solution that provides real-time, agentless discovery via
application flow analysis to continuously and passively track
application dependencies, demand, usage, and change events.

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vCenter Application Discovery Manager
Discover Applications Out-of-the-Box
–Uniquely identify hundreds of common packages and
applications out-of-the-box
–Network-based approach – via vSwitch or physical switch
span – guarantees visibility and discovers unknown and
unexpected dependencies
–Application fingerprinting and patterns identify common
application components and protocols out of the box and
establish a complete map of your application services.
–Ensure site recovery and disaster recovery plans accurately
include all application components.
Eliminate Reliance on Tribal Knowledge
–Map before you make a change to eliminate guesswork
–Catch production applications that have dangling connections
to dev/test environments
–Identify consolidation candidate based on utilization-based
analytics that identify most-used and least-used connections
and servers
–Target specific high-impact server with active discovery and
discovery analytics via agentless protocols – using credentials
to analyze deeper system infrastructure, installed software,
configuration details, and dependencies.
Report on Changes, Compare Configurations
–Detect, log, and report on software and hardware configuration
changes and compare configurations server to server.
–External database reporting capabilities provide the ability to
create customized reports based on the data in Application
Discovery Manager’s repository.
–Operations teams can quickly determine what changed and
track down the truth behind the all-too-common statement:
“I didn’t change anything.”
–Time-based analysis identifies connections and dependencies
based on time-of-day and history
Scale Across Enterprise and Distributed Datacenters
–Scalability for broad deployment across 1000’s of servers.
–Span across multiple datacenters with distributed collection.
–Deploy as virtual or physical appliance
–Aggregate to provide a unified perspective.
Find Out More
For information or to purchase VMware products, call 1-877-
4VMWARE (outside of North America dial [phone]),
visit http://www.vmware.com/products for more information. For
detailed product information and systems requirements, please
refer to additional detail online.
Agentless Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping
The agentless, top-down, auto-discovery process creates a real-
time, interactive model of the entire application infrastructure in
a fraction of the time and cost it would take to achieve the same
results using manual methods or intrusive, agent-based
technologies.
Accuracy and Speed Through vSwitch or Physical Switch
Application Trac Analysis
Passive discovery identifies applications and discovers
relationships by observing network trac either through a span
or mirror port on a physical network switch or on an ESX Server
vSwitch. Application Discovery Manager augments passive
discovery with active discovery, which uses common network
and system protocols to remotely query servers in the managed
network and obtain supplementary data about network hosts.
This hybrid approach allows Application Discovery Manager to
automatically discover and map physical servers, VMs on ESX
Servers, services, applications, databases, J2EE components,
application servers, and composite n-tier applications.
Application Dependency Maps
Leveraging these capabilities, Application Discovery Manager
automatically builds an interactive application dependency map
as well as an application relationship and configuration model—
within just a few hours. Both the dependency map and model are
reconciled across diverse data sources and maintained in
Application Discovery Manager’s repository. The application
relationship and configuration model is then continuously
updated with dependency, configuration, and usage changes.
Key Features
Application Discovery Manager’s automated, real-time
application discovery and dependency mapping enables
eective, dependency-driven change, configuration, incident, and
problem management across physical and virtual environments.
Map Applications Quickly, Accurately via Agentless Discovery
–Automated dependency mapping for unique visibility into the
relationships and interdependencies among applications.
–Agentless, passive, continuous discovery of application
infrastructure, components, services, hosts, usage,
dependencies, and connections.
–Population/federation to existing CMDB and CMS systems.
–Ecient and eective discovery drives datacenter consolida-
tions, virtualization eorts, server rationalization projects, and
application audits