TADDM overview

IBM® Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM) is a configuration management tool that helps IT operations personnel ensure and improve application availability in application environments. TADDM provides the details of configuration items (CIs) using automated, agentless discovery of assets and their application dependencies, and it includes a discovery library technology to help leverage data from other sources.

TADDM provides operational staff with a top-down view of applications so that they can quickly understand the structure, status, configuration, and change history of their business-critical applications. When performance and availability problems occur, this view helps the staff to immediately isolate issues and to more effectively plan for application change without disruption. The TADDM database, a configuration management database, is created and maintained without requiring custom infrastructure modeling. TADDM also provides complete cross-tier dependency maps, topological views, change tracking, event propagation, and detailed reports and analytics.

TADDM depends on the discovery of information, which is performed using sensors that are deployed as part of the TADDM product. The data that results from the discovery process is used to create cross-tier dependency maps that link the physical and logical topologies. This hierarchical directory represents your entire runtime environment.

The following steps are a high-level summary of what TADDM does:
  1. Sensors determine and collect the identity, attributes, and settings of each application, system, and network component.
  2. The configuration data, dependencies, and change history are stored in the TADDM database, and the topologies are stored on the TADDM server. When CIs are discovered, they are stored in the TADDM database from the following sources:
    • Sensors
    • Discovery library books, which are also known as Identity Markup Language (IdML) books, that are generated by external management software systems
    • APIs
  3. The discovered data is displayed as runtime, cross-tier application topologies in the TADDM user interface. Subsequent discoveries update the topology. Also, TADDM maintains the change history of the infrastructure configuration and dependencies.
  4. TADDM generates reports and additional topological views of the information that is stored in the TADDM database.

Entities that TADDM discovers

Table 1 lists and describes the entities that TADDM discovers in your environment.

Table 1. Discovered entities with descriptions
Entity Description
Network tier The following devices are discovered with the MIB2 (RFC 1213) parameter values for each device:
  • Routers
  • Switches
  • Load balancers
  • Firewalls
  • Generic IP devices
System tier The following devices are discovered at the system tier:
  • Server hosts and disks
  • Host IP interfaces
  • Database servers
  • Load balancers or clusters
Application tier The following components are discovered at the application tier. Also, for each component (except for the generic processes), version information, configuration files and properties, host information, and vendor-specific extensions are discovered.
  • Custom servers, based on custom templates that you design
  • Java EE application servers and configurations
  • Java EE and Java SE components and modules
  • Web server components
  • Web modules, configuration files, and installation directories
  • Generic JVM processes
  • Databases
Infrastructure services The system infrastructure services that support the application environment are discovered, and the dependency structure between these service components and the application components are discovered. The following components are in the infrastructure service:
  • DNS and NFS services
  • LDAP
Relationship structure In addition to the discovery of components, the physical and logical connectivity at the network, system, and application tiers are discovered at the following level of support in each of the tiers:
  • Layer 3 IP connectivity
  • Layer 2 connectivity
  • Application component runtime dependencies
  • Infrastructure service dependencies
Configurations and interdependencies are discovered across the following entities:
  • Application components, such as Web servers, application servers, and databases
  • System components, such as hosts, operating systems, load balancers, and database servers
  • Network components, such as routers, switches, and firewalls
  • Infrastructure services, such as DNS and LDAP services
Note: Using virtual IP addresses or multiple network interface controllers might cause TADDM to report incorrect results. When planning a discovery, consider the network infrastructure.