Introduction; Overview; How Data Is Collected - VMware VCENTER APPLICATION DISCOVERY MANAGER 6.1.1 - RESPOSITORY Reference Manual

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Introduction

This chapter introduces the VMware vCenter™ Application Discovery Manager (ADM) repository and
provides an overview that includes descriptions of data collection, table types, and key fields.
This chapter includes the following topics:

"Overview" on page 7

"Synchronizing the External Database" on page 8

Overview

The ADM provides standard reports based on the data collected and stored in the ADM Repository. The
schema of the new ADM External Database is simple to understand and allows you to write reporting queries
over it without disrupting the performance of the other ADM services.

How Data Is Collected

The ADM collects, manages, and stores data through the components listed in Table
Table 1-1. ADM Components
Component
Active Discovery‐
Unix
Active Discovery‐
Windows
Passive Discovery
Aggregator
Database
Figure 1‐1 illustrates how data is collected and stored in the ADM database.
VMware, Inc.
Description
Collects data from the configuration objects in your data center. The following discovery types
apply:
 IP discovery: Detects hosts or other configuration items with a specific IP address when
passive discovery fails to discover them.
 Detail discovery: Extends the information obtained using passive and IP discovery. It uses
common network protocols to remotely query servers in the managed network and obtains
supplementary information about network hosts that is added to the database.
A discovery engine that uses WMI based discovery policies for performing active discovery on
Windows machines.
Passively observes the network traffic by performing a deep‐packet analysis to discover
applications and component relationships in physical and virtual environments.
Passive discovery also allows you to do the following:

Map dependencies.
 Count the activity of these dependencies.

Identify services.
Receives data from the discovery components and reconciles the data before transferring it to the
database component. The aggregator also provides the user interface for using ADM and is the
integration point for various integrations, for example, ERDB.
An Oracle RDBMS used to store discovered data and ADM configuration.
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