AWS Application Discovery Agent - AWS Application Discovery Service

AWS Application Discovery Agent

The AWS Application Discovery Agent (Discovery Agent) is software that you install on on-premises servers and VMs targeted for discovery and migration. Agents capture system configuration, system performance, running processes, and details of the network connections between systems. Agents support most Linux and Windows operating systems, and you can deploy them on physical on-premises servers, Amazon EC2 instances, and virtual machines.

Note

Before you deploy the Discovery Agent, you must choose a Migration Hub home Region. You must register your agent in your home region.

The Discovery Agent runs in your local environment and requires root privileges. When you start the Discovery Agent, it connects securely with your home region and registers with Application Discovery Service.

  • For example, if eu-central-1 is your home region, it registers arsenal-discovery.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com with Application Discovery Service.

  • Or substitute your home region as needed for all other regions except us-west-2.

  • If us-west-2 is your home region, it registers arsenal.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with Application Discovery Service.

How it works

After registration, the agent starts collecting data for the host or VM where it resides. The agent pings the Application Discovery Service at 15-minute intervals for configuration information.

The collected data includes system specifications, times series utilization or performance data, network connections, and process data. You can use this information to map your IT assets and their network dependencies. All of these data points can help you determine the cost of running these servers in AWS and also plan for migration.

Data is transmitted securely by the Discovery Agents to Application Discovery Service using Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. Agents are configured to upgrade automatically when new versions become available. You can change this configuration setting if desired.

Tip

Before downloading and beginning Discovery Agent installation, be sure to read through all of the required prerequisites in Prerequisites for Discovery Agent

Data collected by Discovery Agent

AWS Application Discovery Agent (Discovery Agent) is software that you install on on-premises servers and VMs. Discovery Agent collects system configuration, times series utilization or performance data, process data, and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) network connections. This section describes the data that's collected.

Table legend for Discovery Agent collected data:
  • The term host refers to either a physical server or a VM.

  • Collected data is in measurements of kilobytes (KB) unless stated otherwise.

  • Equivalent data in the Migration Hub console is reported in megabytes (MB).

  • The polling period is in intervals of approximately 15 seconds and is sent to AWS every 15 minutes.

  • Data fields denoted with an asterisk (*) are only available in the .csv files that are produced from the agent's API export function.

Data field Description
agentAssignedProcessId* Process ID of processes discovered by the agent
agentId Unique ID of agent
agentProvidedTimeStamp* Date and time of agent observation (mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss am/pm)
cmdLine* Process entered at the command line
cpuType Type of CPU (central processing unit) used in host
destinationIp* IP address of device to which packet is being sent
destinationPort* Port number to which the data/request is to be sent
family* Protocol of routing family
freeRAM (MB) Free RAM and cached RAM that can be made immediately available to applications, measured in MB
gateway* Node address of network
hostName Name of host data was collected on
hypervisor Type of hypervisor
ipAddress IP address of the host
ipVersion* IP version number
isSystem* Boolean attribute to indicate if a process is owned by the OS
macAddress MAC address of the host
name* Name of the host, network, metrics, etc. data is being collected for
netMask* IP address prefix that a network host belongs to
osName Operating system name on host
osVersion Operating system version on host
path Path of the command sourced from the command line
sourceIp* IP address of the device sending the IP packet
sourcePort* Port number from which the data/request originates from
timestamp* Date and time of reported attribute logged by agent
totalCpuUsagePct Percentage of CPU usage on host during polling period
totalDiskBytesReadPerSecond (Kbps) Total kilobits read per second across all disks
totalDiskBytesWrittenPerSecond (Kbps) Total kilobits written per second across all disks
totalDiskFreeSize (GB) Free disk space expressed in GB
totalDiskReadOpsPerSecond Total number of read I/O operations per second
totalDiskSize (GB) Total capacity of disk expressed in GB
totalDiskWriteOpsPerSecond Total number of write I/O operations per second
totalNetworkBytesReadPerSecond (Kbps) Total amount of throughput of bytes read per second
totalNetworkBytesWrittenPerSecond (Kbps) Total amount of throughput of bytes written per second
totalNumCores Total number of independent processing units within CPU
totalNumCpus Total number of central processing units
totalNumDisks The number of physical hard disks on a host
totalNumLogicalProcessors* Total number of physical cores times the number of threads that can run on each core
totalNumNetworkCards Total count of network cards on server
totalRAM (MB) Total amount of RAM available on host
transportProtocol* Type of transport protocol used