IT Asset Discovery
Easily discover your on-premise assets and cloud resources with Virima IT Asset Discovery, which features agentless IP-based scanning and an optional agent for Windows.
Virima’s IT Asset Discovery software fully integrates with Virima CMDB and leading ITSM platforms, such as ServiceNow, Ivanti, and more, to enable you to do just that.
With its 100+ probes and integration with industry-leading cloud providers, such as AWS and Azure, Virima’s IT Discovery tool allows you to automatically and repeatedly detect thousands of physical and virtual assets, hundreds of hardware configurations, and any installed software across Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac operating systems.
IT Discovery for Hybrid Environments
Virima’s holistic IT asset discovery software helps you find your assets across data centers, edge, and cloud environments. The extendable probes automatically discover thousands of physical and virtual computer, network, and storage assets.
Easy-to-Deploy IT Discovery Software
Virima Discovery includes everything you need to run and schedule scans of your IT environments and allows you to easily distribute the optional agent to network connected Windows desktops and servers.
Build a CMDB You Can Trust
Accurate and complete configuration details are critical when planning for change, responding to incidents or conducting an audit. You simply cannot rely on manual imports and updates to keep the CMDB current.
How Virima IT Discovery works
Agentless: Virima Discovery is an agentless set-and-forget IT asset discovery tool that identifies all network connected devices and performs deep analysis of hardware and software configurations. You can schedule Virima Discovery to continually rescan the IT estate in order to capture new assets and check existing assets for configuration changes.
Windows agent: Further, Virima Discovery also offers an agent for assets running desktop and server versions of Windows, which do not routinely connect to the network or require persistent configuration monitoring.
Hybrid IT environments: Consequently, with both agentless and agent-based (Windows) discovery, it provides flexible options for hybrid environments, including on premise, cloud and work from anywhere assets.
Features
Virima’s IT asset discovery software can tell you things about your IT assets that you never knew with astonishing accuracy. Virima Discovery also includes Virima CMDB and ViVID Service Mapping resulting in a complete, accurate and visual CMDB.
Virima Discovery comes with many great features and benefits including:
Secure Discovery
- The Virima platform is purpose-built on AWS for multi-tenancy with full data segregation between tenants
- RACI model for role-based access
- Virima Discovery App runs on servers you own and control
- Asset credentials are encrypted on the Discovery App and never sent to the cloud
- Discovery data is encrypted and securely transmitted to the AWS cloud
- Virima is independently certified for AICPA SOC 2 Type 2 audited controls
Agentless IT Discovery Tool
- Download the Virima Discovery App to a Windows server with access to the IP network you wish to scan
- Add credentials for the types of assets you want to is easy to install and configure, no agents required to deploy
- IP-based IT discovery tool that lets you select subnets and ranges to scan
- Hundreds of out-of-the-box, extendable IT asset discovery probes and sensors
- Custom probe generator
- Automated with set-and-forget scheduling
- Intelligent design that won’t flood the network with “scan storms” or affect device performance
- Scan details show the successes, failures, and reasons for failure
Windows Discovery Agent
- Alternative to Virima agentless discovery allowing for more frequent monitoring of network-connected Windows PCs and servers while also alleviating many security and credentialing concerns
- Easy to deploy directly from the Virima UI or as an MSI via Microsoft SCCM and other software distribution tools
- Virima’s new Work from Anywhere “WFA” solution keeps tabs on remote PC’s daily configuration changes and software usage over the Internet
- Track the actual software usage for software metering reports to reclaim underutilized licenses
Identify and Prioritize Vulnerabilities
- NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD) integration included at no additional charge
- Discovery data is used to perform automatic check for known CPEs and CVEs
- ViVID Service Mapping makes prioritizing remediation efforts based on assets criticality to the business fast and easy
- Add an extra layer of protection to existing vulnerability management tools
- Generate vulnerability reports to share with relevant stakeholders and auditors
Broad Coverage
- Data center infrastructure (i.e., servers, network, storage, load balancers)
- Virtual assets (i.e., applications, virtual machines, hypervisors, containers, websites)
- Edge devices (such as desktops, printers, IoT, and others)
- Cloud resources, such as AWS EC2s and VPCs, and Azure Virtual Machines and App Gateways, and much more)
Device-specific Hardware Details
- Model and serial numbers
- CPU, RAM, HD
- Network adapters
- Peripherals
- BIOS, OS version
- Relationships
- Hostnames
Hundreds of OS attributes
- OS version
- Of-the-shelf software
- Custom applications
- Patches
- Certificates
- Listeners, processes, and services
Seamless Integrations
Virima IT Discovery integrates with many common IT management tools and platforms including:
- Virima CMDB and ViVID Service Mapping (included with Virima Discovery)
- Virima ITAM and ITSM
- Third-party ITSM and ITOM solutions (i.e ServiceNow, Ivanti/Cherwell)
- AWS and Azure
- Hypervisors, network, and storage (i.e. VCenter, Hyper-V, Cisco, EMC)
- Event and Alert Management (i.e. Solarwinds, Logic Monitor)
- NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD)
IT Discovery Best Practices
1. Find the best IT discovery tool to meet your needs. Ideally one tool will do the job for all your asset discovery needs but don’t let a small gap in coverage derail your overall ambitions. The selection process needs to include how much detail you expect to collect about each hardware and software asset but also consider how this information will be collected. Do you have the necessary permissions for agentless discovery? How’s your appetite for deploying agents? If your goal is to truly capture everything a blended approach is probably required and will likely involve additional collection through APIs. If the budget allows, be sure to include discovery of asset relationships and application dependency mapping in your criteria. The costs for automating mapping capabilities has come down significantly in the past few years and the benefits are significant. Identifying your needs up front will make the selection process easier and the right IT discovery tool will save you time and costs almost immediately.
2. Keep it simple in the beginning by focusing on network environments and assets that are generally easiest to discover and offer the biggest return in value by way of useful information. Those are usually physical and virtual Windows servers and desktops on the corporate network. This will give you an immediate baseline of what’s likely the biggest piece of hardware and software in the IT estate. With Windows out of the way, focus on other server operating systems like Linux and Unix, hypervisors, network infrastructure, storage, peripherals and other edge components. Then make a plan to hit remote sites and cloud environments. Lastly you might go after the work from home computers. For most that’s going to be the biggest challenge and expect to deploy some type of agent to do it. Your IT asset discovery processes will mature over time but don’t try to do it all alone. Work with stakeholders across the organization to come up with a strategy for discovering every IT asset. Remind them it’s in their best interest because they too will benefit from the results.
3. To get the best results out of your IT discovery tool, make sure you run frequent and time-varied scans. Since you would never choose an IT asset discovery that could potentially disrupt your daily operations during a scan, it’s wise to vary your schedule scans to cast the widest net, not just during low demand or scheduled downtimes. For the most effective use of the discovered data, make sure the discovery tool can be tightly integrated with other systems such as IT Asset Management (ITAM), IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), ITSec tools and financial and ERP platforms.
4. Address Exceptions. Now that the majority of assets have been successfully discovered and moved to the CMDB it’s time to focus on the few remaining hold-outs. These discovery exceptions could be due to inadequate credentials, a lack of device level permissions or installed toolsets, or maybe they have been too busy to respond when scanned. If you’re using advanced discovery software like Virima Discovery, there should be plenty of information available to help you determine the issue and decide on the best course of action. Generally this is where you’ll need to leverage some institutional knowledge to get the discovery process across the finish line.
Why Virima?
You can’t manage and secure what you don’t know you have or why you have it.
Virima’s IT discovery software works beyond enabling you to perform a deep scan and identify various assets. It provides you all the necessary information to determine critical relationships and dependencies and can even alert you to known vulnerabilities on those assets. This allows you to prioritize upgrades and patches based on the assets importance and overall risk of impact to IT services.
Virima Discovery is also useful in identifying root causes of service disruptions. With the ability to run instant rescans of assets linked to services, you will know if something is non-responsive and in need of immediate attention. Discovery will also detect configuration changes on those assets since it was last scanned. When leveraged with Virima ITSM or platforms such as ServiceNow, Ivanti and Cherwell, open incidents and pending/completed changes will appear on the ViVID Service Maps making it easy to quickly spot areas of concern. You will also be alerted to known vulnerabilities through Virima’s out of the box integration with NIST NVD.
Finally, Virima Discovery’s full capabilities are available for cloud-based servers and applications as well. And with seamless integrations for AWS and Azure, there will be no more ITSM blind spots when it comes to cloud.
Challenges & Solutions
IT discovery is the process of identifying what assets are on the network and performing a deep scan of those assets for hardware and software configurations. An advanced IT Discovery tool like Virima will also map relationships and dependencies among those assets.
A powerful IT discovery tool like Virima IT Discovery will help you get a complete visibility into your most valuable assets, including hardware, software, data center, edge, cloud, remote and work-from-home assets. Other asset types you can expect to get from an IT discovery tool include virtual machines, containers, websites and data storage.
IT discovery and IT asset management go hand in hand. A proper IT discovery tool helps you automatically discover all your IT assets across your IT environment, including license and configuration details.
Yes. With an intuitive IT discovery tool like Virima, you can identify and classify complete information about virtual machines and the hypervisors that manage them, such as VMWare VCenter and Microsoft Hyper-V. Virima IT Discovery will tell you things like where it resides (physical server, AWS EC2 instance, Azure Virtual Machine), hardware configurations, operating system details, installed software and relationships to other VM’s and infrastructure components. It will also tell you what applications and services the virtual machine supports.
IT asset discovery makes it simple for you to know your assets inside out, what you have or don’t have, what you need, and what you need to dispose of. When done right, IT asset discovery helps you improve security and avoid penalties by keeping you aware of unlicensed software usage. IT discovery helps you understand your network architecture and identify vulnerabilities, keeps you aware of license status for your assets, simplifies IT asset tracking, and helps you make efficient and responsible financial decisions when it comes to IT assets.
Selecting an appropriate IT discovery tool that’s compatible with your existing infrastructure is crucial. While choosing an IT discovery tool, make sure it has the ability to integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure. For instance, Virima IT Discovery seamlessly integrates with AWS and Azure, hypervisors, network and storage APIs, Event and Alert Management,
third-party ITSM and ITOM solutions, and Virima CMDB, ITAM, and ITSM.
For IT cost optimization, you need to reduce expenses and spend on the right things. To optimize costs related to IT, you first need visibility into your IT assets which can only be possible through IT discovery. An IT discovery tool like Virima will help you gain transparency and complete view into your assets. Not just that, it keeps you vigilant by constantly monitoring your IT environment so that the waste doesn’t build up again. IT discovery also automates manual, error-prone tasks to reduce disruptions.
Virima’s IT discovery tool integrates natively with Virima CMDB and rather seamlessly to third party CMDB’s such as ServiceNow, Ivanti and Cherwell. Virima IT Discovery helps populate and maintain these CMDB’s with accurate data. Virima IT Discovery also enables automatic processing of machine-learned asset relationships and application dependency mapping. Virima IT Discovery gets you closer to an automated CMDB than any other IT discovery tool and its relationship and dependency mapping capabilities provides much needed IT asset intelligence for IT operations and IT security to make timely and accurate decisions.
Use Cases
How Discovery and Service Mapping Create Value for IT
Virima can tell you more things about more IT assets with greater accuracy than ever imagined and present the info in a variety of powerful, dynamic visualizations and reports.
Build a CMDB
Do you feel like CMDB (configuration management database) is a puzzle you can’t solve because there’s no automatic way to build and maintain it?
Service Asset and Configuration Management
Virima takes asset and configuration management to the next level with PinkVERIFY ITILv4 service asset and configuration management.
Use Case 1
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Use Case 2
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Use Case 3
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Resources
How Discovery and Service Mapping Create Value for IT
Virima can tell you more things about more IT assets with greater accuracy than ever imagined and present the info in a variety of powerful, dynamic visualizations and reports.
