When you have several applications or when you have multiple tiers in an application, creating applications using the public APIs or the user interface becomes a long process. VMware Aria Operations for Networks auto-discovers applications and tiers and enables you to add them automatically, which reduces a lot of manual effort.

In VMware Aria Operations for Networks, you can discover applications based on:

  • Tags (VMware vCenter Server or AWS tags)
  • VM Names
  • ServiceNow
  • Flows
  • Advanced properties such as a combination of VM names, VM tags, NSX-V security tags, and security groups.
Note:

Note: In VMware Aria Operations for Networks, VMware NSX-T tags are displayed as VM tags. Therefore, by default, VMware NSX-T tags are also supported in application discovery.

An example of the application discovery construct

Consider a scenario where you have:
  • Added VMware vCenter server as a data source.
  • Added four VMs in your data center - VM1, VM2, VM3, and VM4.
  • Defined tags (key-value) that defines the application names to which each VMs belong.
  • Defined tags (key-value) that defines the tier to which each VMs belong.
For example, see the table:
VM Name Key-value tags
VM1
  • Application Name: MyApplication1
  • Application Tier: App
VM2
  • Application Name: MyApplication1
  • Application Tier: Web
VM3
  • Application Name: MyApplication2
  • Application Tier: App
VM4
  • Application Name: MyApplication2
  • Application Tier: Web

Discovering Applications based on Tags

VMware Aria Operations for Networks, you can define a grouping criteria for application discovery for these tags.

In this example, based on the defined tags and grouping criteria, VMware Aria Operations for Networks discovers two applications (MyApplication1 and MyApplication2) with two tiers (App and Web) and its related VMs.
Application Tier VM
MyApplication1 App VM1
MyApplication1 Web VM2
MyApplication2 App VM3
MyApplication2 Web VM4

Discovering Applications and Tiers based on VM Names

If the VM names are defined in the following format:

ApplicationName : Tier : VMName.

For example, 
MyApplication1 : App : VM1
MyApplication1 : Web : VM2
MyApplication2 : App : VM3
MyApplication2 : Web : VM4
When you use the following regular expression (regex), VMware Aria Operations for Networks discovers two applications.
  • App Regex: (.*)_(.*)_.*-.*
  • Tier Regex: (.*)_(.*)_(.*)-.*
Application Tiers and its VMs
MyApplication1
  • App and MyApplication1 : App : VM1
  • Web and MyApplication1 : Web : VM2
MyApplication2
  • App and MyApplication2 : App : VM3
  • Web and MyApplication2 : Web : VM4
Note: Randomly defined VM names cannot be grouped for application discovery.

Discovering Applications Based on Flows

VMware Aria Operations for Networks uses machine learning and statistical analysis to discover applications automatically and group the VMs into their respective applications and tiers. VMware Aria Operations for Networks analyzes the network flow between the VMs and groups the VMs by identifying the application and the tier boundaries between these VMs.

The system analyzes the flows on multiple dimensions such as density of the flows between VMs, common open ports between VMs, number of incoming against outgoing connections, configuration data from load balancers, and so on, and groups VMs with high similarity across these dimensions into a unique application. The process repeats again, but only among the VMs that are already grouped into an application, and to group VMs into their respective tiers.

Note:

  • To discover applications based on flows, you must match the following minimum requirements:

    • Have at least 10 VMs discovered in VMware Aria Operations for Networks.
    • Have at least 100 VM-VM flows.

  • To improve the accuracy of flow-based application discovery, you must add load balancers to VMware Aria Operations for Networks. To learn about the supported load balancers, see Supported Load Balancers.

Discovering Applications Based on Flows by Uploading a CSV File

In VMware Aria Operations for Networks, you can use the Discovery Options feature to upload a CSV file to discover applications. The CSV file can either be exported from the content management database (CMDB) or manually created from other tools to improve the Flow based application and tier discovery. The inputs of the CSV file are verified using the Flow based application discovery algorithm and then used to discover applications. The uploaded CSV file can also be used to name applications and tiers.

This feature can enhance the discovery of applications where only some of the application definitions are known, and the application definitions may not be completely accurate. Flow based application discovery can still add VMs or remove VMs using the inputs of the CSV file depending on the actual Flow pattern at the time of discovery.