Run a Service Flow Discovery

The device discovery process collects information about the currently running services on the compute devices, but that might not be enough, especially if you want to know how those services are communicating with the other compute devices in terms of data transfer, service flows, etc. This information will help you build further the dependencies in the business ::title.

The collected service flow information is a linkage between two compute devices that have the same services installed and those services are communicating with each other on a specific port. A complete flow will show the source and the destination of the transferred data.

A complete service flow is when both the source and the target hosts are identified and confirmed.

An incomplete service flow is when only one of the communication sides is identified and confirmed.

note

Service flow discovery is available only for compute devices in a local data center.

Create service flow discovery

1. Navigate to Discovery > Server Flows Schedule
2. Choose the organization and site from the header.
   The discovery process will be executed under the selected organization and site and the results will be stored under the respective inventory.
   The list of available compute devices will be filtered based on these values.
3. Select the start and end date of the schedule.
4. Select the recurrence interval for the data collection.
5. Click on the Get Devices button to see the list of all compute devices for the selected site.
   A compute device can be included in only one service flow discovery. The list of available devices is prefiltered to exclude devices that are already part of a service flow discovery process.
6. Choose one, multiple, or all devices that will be regularly scanned for service flow information.
7. Click on the Submit button to create the service flow discovery.

Once scheduled, the first discovery will be triggered after the recurring interval passes.

Operations with discoveries

Once the service flow discovery is created, you can perform several operations.

Find the discovery

Once you navigate to the Discovery > Server Flows Schedule section, you will see under the Schedule Requests tab a list of the scheduled service flow discoveries for that site and basic information about each such as:

• Service flow request ID used for detailed troubleshooting.
• Service flow request name used for easy navigation.
• Service flow request start/end date indicating when the request was created and optionally an end date.
• Service flow request last started/ last completed date indicating when the request was last executed (started and completed). It is useful when you want to know when the scheduled service flow request was last executed.
• Service flow request recurring interval in minutes indicating how often a discovery is scheduled to run.
• Job status with details of how many devices have been scanned during the last service flow run.

View discovery details

You can see a list of device IPs and FQDNs included in a particular service flow discovery process by clicking on it from the table.

Start/stop a discovery

If you want to temporarily stop the execution of any scheduled discovery without the need to delete and create it again, you can do that by using the Start/Pause buttons under the Action column next to the discovery. When started, the discovery starts from the last point it was stopped.

Delete a discovery

You can easily delete any discovery regardless of its type and status by clicking the Delete button from the Action column next to the discovery.

Service flow details for a device

When service flow data is collected for a particular device, the details can be seen from here:

1. Navigate to Inventory > Table View > Devices.
2. Choose a compute device.
3. Navigate to the Schedule tab to see the list of device and service flow discoveries in which the device is included.
4. Navigate to the Flows tab to see the discovered service flows for that device.
   You will see both complete and incomplete flows in a graphic representation showing the source and the target of each flow.
   Click on the Data view button to switch to a table view and see more details about each flow such as hostnames, services, ports, status, update time, etc.