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 Applications.

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 a Service Flow Discovery

1. Navigate to Discovery > Server Flows Discovery
2. Choose the 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. Click + Add Service Flows Discovery
4. Enter discovery job Name
5. Select the Start-End date and time of the schedule. You can select only the start date and time.
6. Select the recurrence interval in Minutes for the data collection.
7. Click the Select 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.
8. Choose one, multiple, or all devices that will be regularly scanned for service flow information.
9. Click Create.

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

Operations with Service Flow Discoveries

Once you navigate to the Discovery > Server Flows Discovery section, you will see a list of the scheduled service flow discoveries for that site and basic information about each, and you can perform the following operations.

• Search by request name or ID for troubleshooting.
• See the request job status and progress of how many devices have been scanned during the last service flow run.
• Use the Start/Pause buttons under the Actions column for a particular service flow discovery to temporarily stop the execution of any scheduled discovery without the need to delete and create it again. When started again, the discovery starts from the last point it was stopped.
• Use the Delete (trashbin) icon under the Actions column for a particular service flow discovery to delete it.
• Use the Preview Devices (info) icon under the Actions column for a particular service flow discovery to get the list of device IPs and FQDNs included in the particular service flow discovery process.

See Service Flow Discoveries for a device

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

1. Navigate to Inventory > Devices.
2. Choose a compute device and click the Details (info) icon at the end of the device row
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 table view with details about source and target hostnames, services, ports, flow status ,and last update time.