Application Dependency
Important:The product name for this user guide has changed from Foundation and Cloudscape to Business Service Discovery and Migration Planning. Previous UI pages known as Foundation have changed to Business Service Discovery. Previous UI pages known as CloudScape have changed to Migration Planning.
On the Application Dependency page, you can view and export your environment’s application dependency (connectivity) data. You can view and interact with connectivity on a stack level, up to 100,000 rows, and you can download the entire connectivity data set, either as a monolith or per-stack. In the Firewall Rules tab, you can explore listening ports within an application stack as well as details about the activity on those ports.
Note:This page shares some functionality with the Detailed Application Dependency Data (DADD) report, which can be found under the Additional Reports page. The DADD report will be retired in 2023.
The Application Dependency page’s features are described in the following sections:
| • | Bulk Actions |
| • | Results by Application Stack |
| • | Firewall Rules |
| • | Dependency Collection and Classification |
You may generate and download both the All Stacks Export connectivity report and the Whole Environment Export. Use the generate options before attempting to download the reports, and re-generate in order to include newer data if it has been some time since the reports were last generated.
Note:For larger assessments, it may take hours to generate an entire data set.
The All Stacks export is a zipped directory containing one .csv file per application stack. All observed connections into, out of, and within an application stack are included in each stack’s file.
The Whole Environment export consists of a single .csv containing the entirety of the connectivity data collected for the assessment, as well as a .csv containing the backing data for the firewall report.
You can view and interact with the connectivity to/from an individual application stack, up to a limit of 100,000 rows. The filter controls can be used to further narrow down the subset of connectivity records displayed. After changing filter or application stack selections, click refresh data to fetch the new dataset. For further discussion of how this data is collected and classified, see Dependency Collection and Classification.
Filtering
Data filtering can be applied based on location, protocol, criticality (see Criticality Criteria), and stack/device tags. Filter controls are collapsed by default. Further sorting/filtering of the result set is available in the table, but note that table filtering may be unreliable for very large (>100,000) result sets.
Tip:A list of all protocols present in your environment can be found in the Protocol Report, on the Additional Reports page.
The firewall report displays information about ports that were observed in the LISTENING state during netstat collection. Individual records may be expanded to display details about the application as well as data about its observed dependencies.
Dependency Collection and Classification
For details on how we collect netstat data, view the Netstat and Linux/UNIX collection (see SSH Collection Module Command Reference) documentation.
Netstat data is processed and translated into network graph data. Edges (connections between servers) are enriched with data about the process and application which own each side of the connection, where available.
Each distinct connection record is flagged as either “critical” or “non-critical” using the criteria in the following table. Criticality is mostly used in the automatic dependency-based generation of business services, but it is also visible on this page as well in other parts of the platform. Non-critical connectivity is generally traffic relating to network maintenance, monitoring, software updates, and other functionality that is not specific to an application’s business purpose, and which may generally be ignored in many contexts. We maintain a library of such criteria, and we welcome suggested inputs/improvements to this list via the Flexera Community Ideas Board. You need a Flexera Community sign in and password to access the Ideas Board.
Connections are considered critical unless we positively identify them otherwise using the following criteria:
|
Condition |
Non-Critical Traffic Type |
|
Unknown application context for flows between Windows devices |
Windows registry data is sufficiently reliable that unknown context can be disregarded |
|
App context matches “Windows System” |
Windows system traffic |
|
Process name or app context matches “backup” |
Network backup processes |
|
Process name matches “healthservice.exe” |
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager |
|
App context matches Exchange Server |
Microsoft Exchange Server |
|
App context is “Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager” or “System Center Configuration Manager” |
Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager |
|
App context is “Private Branch Exchange” |
VOIP traffic |
|
App context is “Citrix” |
Citrix |
|
Process name is “ovbbccb.exe” |
HP OpenView Communication Broker |
|
Protocol name is “hp-alarm-mgr” |
HP Data Alarm Manager |
|
Protocol name is “tcp-10123” |
SCCM Client->Server Notification |
|
Protocol name is “tcp-2512” |
Citrix port |
|
Protocol name is “smtp” |
Mail Service |
|
Protocol name is “IBM Lotus Notes RPC” |
IBM Lotus Notes |
|
Protocol name is “Symantec NetBackup” |
Symantec NetBackup |
|
Process name is “Ssms.exe” |
Microsoft SQL Management Studio |
|
Process name matches “SSH” |
Secure Shell network management |
|
Protocol name is “ldap” |
LDAP is normally a shared service |
|
Process name matches “rsyslogd” |
SYSLOG |
|
Protocol name is “XMPP” |
XMPP messaging |
|
Process name matches “AeXNSAgent.exe” |
Altiris Agent for Symantec |
|
Process name matches “klnagent.exe” |
Kaspersky Agent |
|
App context matches “splunk” |
Splunk |
|
App context matches “taniumclient” |
Tanium (peer-to-peer) |
|
App context matches “kaseya” |
Kaseya Monitoring and Endpoint Management |