Component discovery

After you are confident that a component template developed during the design phase satisfies your requirements, you can use it to run a Component Discovery Job.

Instructions for creating a Component Discovery Job are provided in Creating and modifying Component Discovery Jobs. This Job compares the signature of a component template with the configuration of a server. If the server configuration satisfies the signature, the Component Discovery Job creates a component by associating the component template with the server. If a component includes multiple instances of a local property, the Component Discovery Job compares the signature to each instance of that local property on each server, creating a separate component every time the test succeeds. In this way you can rapidly create multiple instances of the same component on a single server.

When components are successfully discovered on a server, BMC Server Automation creates a representation of that component in the Servers and Component Templates folders. In the Servers folder, the component is associated with the appropriate server when you browse the server. In the Component Templates folder, the component is associated with the appropriate component template. You can also organize and manually display components in the Components folder.

BMC Server Automation also provides a mechanism for manually associating a component with a server, as described in Adding components to servers manually. This procedure allows you to quickly add a single component to a server. Manual creation of components lets you define exceptions to compliance rules. This can be valuable if you know a server cannot satisfy compliance rules but still want to associate a component with it.

Typically, if you are using components to ensure compliance with a policy, you use a Discovery Job to create components. Discovery Jobs let you rapidly create components on many servers, which is typically necessary if you are enforcing a policy such as security requirement. On the other hand, if you are using components to distribute a consistent software model, you can use a Discovery Job to create a component, or you can use the manual process for component discovery if you are only creating a few components based on a component template.