Some questions about Discovery

jpcb0108
Tera Contributor

‎03-07-2025 05:08 AM

Hi Everyone,

 

I am quite confused with how Discovery works especially for discovering software installations. I have some questions about it.

 

1. If not using File Discovery, for detecting software in Windows machines, does Discovery just get the list of installed software from the Windows registry?

 

2. Using only ServiceNow Discovery & File Discovery, what does ServiceNow do if a software is uninstalled by the time it runs its next scan? Does ServiceNow detect that a specific Software is not found and will remove it from the cmdb_sam_sw_install table (assuming SAM Pro is activated), or does it just update a field to notify that the software is uninstalled, or does it do nothing and the data for the software's installation just stays in the cmdb_sam_sw_install table?

 

3. If the software installation just stays in the table I am assuming if we want to clean this up we would probably have a scheduled job run and check when the software was last discovered?

 

Thanks.

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Kieran Anson
Kilo Patron

‎03-10-2025 12:08 PM

  1. If File Discover is not used, and glide.discovery.discover_software is set to true, then additional probes are triggered during the Exploration phase. For example, windows devices have the 'Windows - Installed Software' probe triggered. This does query WMI for file installations
  2. Yes the entry is deleted from the table
  3. Although #2 answers this, you'd use a CMDB policy to retire data which doesn't meet your criteria. This applies to other related CI tables
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