VMware VCENTER APPLICATION DISCOVERY MANAGER 6.1 - REPOSITORY, User Manual

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VMware, Inc. 9
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The VMware vCenter™ Application Discovery Manager (ADM) is an enterprise datacenter management
solution that uses agentless discovery and provides continuous dependency mapping of applications.
ADM helps you gain an understanding of your service dependencies. ADM also provides automated and
real ‐ time application discovery capability across physical and virtual environments.
An accurate application dependency map is essential to virtualize applications, move datacenters, build a site
recovery plan, and to move a service to the cloud.
This chapter describes different ADM architecture solutions and also describes how to configure and deploy
them. Topics include:
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“What Does ADM Do?” on page 9
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“Essential Concepts” on page 10
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“ADM Components” on page 10
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“Architecture Solutions” on page 11
What Does ADM Do?
ADM performs the following high ‐ level functions:

ADM discovers Configuration Items (CIs). It also discovers the relationships and dependencies between
these instances in real time. The discovery data is stored in the Management Data Repository. The map
feature in the User Interface (UI) provides a graphical representation of the relationships and
dependencies between all the CIs.
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ADM determines the baseline of usage for these configuration items. Further, the ADM detects
inconsistencies from the norm.
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ADM provides impact and predictive reporting and helps you troubleshoot errors.
ADM helps to accurately answer the following questions:

What hosts, applications, and connections do I have?
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How are CIs used?
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What are the dependencies among them?
Architecture Overview
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ADM provides both known and unknown information about an infrastructure. It tells you what
you know, and what you do not know. For example, you might think that no laptops are communicating
with a database server. Using the map, you can see the hosts that you know are in your infrastructure.
However, you might also see that there are hosts or laptops communicating with the database server.
N
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Baseline is the first 24 hours of activity of a configuration item.