What is the performance impact of running BMC Atrium Discovery?

Running BMC Atrium Discovery should have a minimal impact on your environment – the discovery techniques used are non-intrusive, lightweight and agent-free.

What can BMC Atrium Discovery discover in the network?

BMC Atrium Discovery is IP-based and can discover any host system with an IP connection including servers, workstations, network nodes, printers, wireless access points – even mainframes that have an IP connection. It uses a wide range of discovery techniques to discover software running on these hosts and the network connections between that software.

What discovery techniques do you use?

BMC Atrium Discovery uses a range of discovery techniques where appropriate. These include:

• Network scanning (looking for services on well-known TCP and UDP ports on IP-reachable machines).
• Remote command execution (looking at specific processes running on each node, querying package managers and querying established inter-process communications mechanisms).
• SNMP (MIBs provide a rich source of management information).

Will any network security need to be disabled for the discovery process?

Obviously the BMC Atrium Discovery appliance needs to be able to reach areas of the network in order to discover hosts. However various methods of providing secure access are possible without disabling firewalls and access control policies, including using VPN tunnels and using slave BMC Atrium Discovery appliances. Some IDS systems may identify certain activities (such as port scans) as suspicious.

What is the impact of my applications running on platforms that are not supported by BMC Atrium Discovery?

Our discovery process will identify endpoints on such computers if they are visible from other hosts. You will need to complete details of programs running on them manually, though it may also be possible to categorize some of the components of the applications running on the unsupported platform either by which port it, or its counterpart, is listening on.

Can the product introduce any risk into my network or application infrastructure?

In providing a clear picture of your total IT infrastructure, BMC Atrium Discovery will actually reduce risk in your network by allowing you to weed out rogue elements that do not meet corporate policy, are out of date or provide potential security holes.
The BMC Atrium Discovery discovery process uses standard techniques that should not de-stabilize elements of the infrastructure.
Since of course there are always risks with deploying new technology, BMC's implementation plan involves analyzing areas of potential risk and achieving the right balance of risk and reward. BMC's test plan is also aimed at minimizing risk – ideally including testing in the customer's test environment.

Do I need to install any software on other computers?

The BMC Atrium Discovery ethos is agent-free management – we do not believe the logistical challenges associated with having an agent on every node is justifiable, so no BMC Atrium Discovery specific software needs to be installed on other computers. The BMC Atrium Discovery user interface is entirely web-based.

Why is agent-free discovery so important?

Agent-based discovery relies upon a level of control of asset deployment that does not exist in most businesses. It also implies a significant cost overhead to maintain agents on each platform, including approving, testing and deploying the agents. Finally, agents may not be available for the range of target platforms that your organization uses. We use standard techniques that have individually been authorized and deployed.

If you have any other questions about BMC Atrium Discovery, please contact Customer Support.