Configuring discovery

This section describes how BMC Helix Discovery operates and how to configure and run the product. 

The discovery subsystem locates devices in the network and obtains relevant information from them as quickly as possible, using a variety of different tools and techniques to communicate. The reasoning subsystem works on the raw data obtained by the discovery section to infer the maximum amount of information about hosts and programs and populate the datastore intelligently. The reasoning subsystem uses patterns that identify running software based on the network ports, processes found, packages installed, protocols used, and so on. It also intelligently searches the discovered data to resolve relationships between items of software.In BMC Helix Discovery the on-premises portion of the system, the BMC Helix Discovery Outpost, contains the discovery subsystem. The BMC Helix Discovery Outpost sends the raw data securely to the BMC Helix Discovery service.

The following table lists discovery settings that you can configure in any sequence. These steps enable you to suit your discovery instance to particular business needs. For example, you can select which ports to scan or adjust session settings.