What is Matilda Discover? #
Matilda Discover is an automated discovery solution that discovers applications, services and infrastructure both on-premises and in the cloud. It discovers infrastructure, network traffic, storage information, services, applications and databases, and can identify end of life and dormant applications. Discover is an agentless solution that observes your environment to produce the data required for a successful cloud migration.
The Power of Matilda Discover #
Matilda Discover automatically discovers applications, services, databases, operating systems, virtualization, hardware infrastructure, network traffic, and storage information on any environment, and identifies end of life and dormant applications.
Matilda Discover provides the analysis necessary to make your critical decisions supported by facts involving:
- Dependency analysis of all applications
- Relationships between applications and databases
- Topology view of the entire environment
- Application and database profiling including Rev and Patch levels and security vulnerabilities
Discover then automates the assessment of your environment to include:
- Cloud suitability check for each application
- Migration strategy analysis including triage of applications based on Lift/Shift, Lift/Refresh, Lift/Rebuild
- Total cost of ownership analysis
- Business vs risk recommendations based on application analysis and complexity
- Cloud to cloud analysis (cost budget for all major public clouds including AWS, Azure, Google GCP, and Oracle)
- Utilizations and optimizations
Discover then provides the planning step to include:
- Application Grouping
- Wave and Group Planning
- Migration Priority Analysis
- Cloud Cost Analysis
Discovery Steps #
Matilda Discover runs in the background to collect valuable information and key insights into your environment. Once installed, you simply input user and account information and select the type and target environment for discovery.
Account Verification #
For a successful discovery, you must provide credentials for all accounts you will be using and these credentials must be verified by the tool. For account verification, open Account-Manager under Settings. Enter all the accounts you will be using for the discovery. You can create a group or select an existing group at this stage. For more information regarding account verification and user setup, see Managing Users, Roles & Accounts below.
Verified credentials under Account Manager
Starting a New Discovery #
Matilda Discover supports 4 types of discovery techniques: Network Discovery, Template Discovery, vCenter Discovery, and Kubernetes Discovery. These options are visible under the Start New Discovery button on the top right of the discover dashboard.
Starting a new discovery from the Discover Dashboard
Network Discovery #
Network discovery is the most common Discover use case. For a network discovery, you will need to provide information regarding the network, credentials, configuration, and schedule.
Begin by naming the discovery and entering the range of IP addresses to be discovered. Scan through the provided IP Ranges or CIDRs or IP address with provided Service Accounts. Provide the one or many IP Ranges or CIDR blocks under a discovery request. For a successful discovery, you must provide credentials where necessary (see Account Verification above).
Performing a Network Discovery
Next, on the Credentials page, select the execution mode for Linux instances. Select the login mode to retrieve credentials for login. You can also add credentials manually as well.
Entering credentials in a Network Discovery
For better tagging and grouping, the user can update/verify the datacenter, region, project, line of business and environment details. These details will help identify these elements of the discovery later. When entering application names, use only a comma (,) to separate the application names, as demonstrated below.
Configuring a Network Discovery
Enable utilization collection by selecting Yes to assess the device utilization, dependencies and other application details by choosing the time interval and time period from the dropdown list. This provides right sizing aiming to optimize the Discovery. Select No if you want to remove the dependency tracking collections. Select the Submit option to start the discovery.
Scheduling a Network Discovery
Polling Rate and Network Utilization Note #
Most customers poll between 15-30 minutes and use around 2% network utilization, but a higher polling rate and a high number of workloads is expected to increase the required bandwidth. This depends on the number of entities/workloads/VMs you are trying to discover, as well as your polling rate. For example, a polling rate of 5 minutes against 1,000 entities will result in a higher network utilization than a 15-30 minute polling rate. Given the recommended discovery window of 4-6 weeks, a polling rate of 15 minutes is recommended to minimize network utilization for any number of entities. Default recommendation for assets below 1000 entities is 15 mins polling rate for 2 weeks.
Template Discovery #
Matilda’s Discover Template supports an easy way to import your Excel data for a faster upload.
To access the template, click Download Sample Template in the orange pane on the right side of the page. Follow the guidelines sheet in the sample template to fill in the required details, including target servers IP addresses, account group, and environment. The guidelines sheet in the sample template provides specific details for target server discovery.
Performing Discovery using Matilda’s Discovery Template and access to the sample template
Click on the upload button to upload the Discovery Template. Then, select the Submit option to immediately start the discovery.
Choose the time interval and time period from the dropdown list. This provides right sizing for optimization. A note on polling rate and network utilization is listed above under the Network Discovery step.
Scheduling a discovery using a template
vCenter Discovery #
Easily integrate your vCenter if you already have VMware and credentials to login. The images below demonstrate the steps of entering the discovery name, network address, credentials like username and community name, and discovery scheduling.
Performing a vCenter Discovery
Entering credentials for a vCenter Discovery
Scheduling a vCenter Discovery
Enabling utilization collections for a few weeks is provided by Discover to help assess the device utilization, dependencies and optimal sizing & clicking submit will initiate the Vcenter Discovery. See the note on polling rate and network utilization above for more information.
Automatic Precheck #
After starting a new discovery, the precheck process will automatically begin. In this precheck process, the discovery process will pass through various states like ping, Telnet, account authentication and account access. Once the target instances comply with the discovery requirements, Discover will proceed to deep dive discovery.
Clicking the Discover tab will display the list of discoveries and their precheck status
To verify whether a precheck is successful and what issues may have occurred during precheck, click the 👁 View button next to the precheck status. This will provide success and failure information as listed in the image below.
Example of failed prechecks
Navigating the User Interface #
Matilda Discover features a variety of dashboards and views depicting rich insights captured during the discovery process. The main menu on the left side of the screen offers a quick path for navigation in Discover. The main menu naturally minimizes when the mouse is not hovering over it, unless you activate the menu lock button on the top right of the menu.
The Main Menu and the Menu Lock Button pictured on the left side of the interface
Discover features a number of useful icons that change the way information is presented. For example, many pages include buttons to toggle between views at the top right corner of the page. The example below shows buttons to toggle between the Dashboard View, List View, Detail View, and the App To App View of verified applications.
Toggle between views using the buttons at the top right corner of the page
Another useful button appearing throughout the Discover interface is the 👁 View button, which appears next to data in the various lists in Discover. Additionally, the 3 Dots button appears at the right end of rows in lists, and opens a window to dial into data or edit/delete data points. Finally, small icons appear throughout the interface to enable searching, refreshing, filtering, and stats report downloading. Examples of all these icons are all visible in the image below.
The View, 3 Dots, and other icons visible on the Discover screen in the user interface
Matilda Discover also provides rich details and visualizations for hosts and instances. These will be discussed in more detail in the Host Details section, and can be found whenever the Switch button appears on the right corner of the screen.
The Switch button and dropdown menu for dialing into specific instance details
Managing Users, Roles & Accounts #
User Roles & Privileges #
Matilda Discover supports multiple User Roles with unique access capabilities.
When logging in for the first time, you will be taken to the Discover home page with a Default User Role, which provides you with minimum access. The Super Admin, Matilda Admin, and Discovery Admin roles will be created as part of Matilda Discover installation. These roles can create new users on request from individual users. Carefully add roles to new users based on their required privileges.
User Role Capabilities Matrix #
| Super Admin | Matilda Admin | Discovery Admin | Discovery User | Discovery Initiator | Default User | |
| Full access across the application | x | |||||
| Create/delete/update user details | x | x | x | |||
| Create/edit page-level access | x | |||||
| Create/edit role information | x | x | x | |||
| Update look-up details (master data management) | x | x | x | |||
| Create credentials in User Management for discovery initiation | x | x | x | x | ||
| Edit personal details in User Management | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Initiate/reinitiate discoveries | x | x | x | x | ||
| Run assessments | x | x | x | |||
| Run and view all reports | x | x | x | x | ||
| View discovery information | x | x | x | x | x |
User Management #
In Matilda Discover, User Management maintains the credentials used to initiate discoveries. To access user management, click User under Management on the left hand menu.
To add a new user, click the blue +Add button at the top of the User page. You will need to provide their name, email address, password, and expiry date when applicable. Admins will also be able to view all roles by clicking on the Role tab, next to the User tab.
All users will be able to view their roles (both active and inactive) and edit their login details by clicking their name in the list of users. For more information on user capabilities, see the User Role Capabilities Matrix above.
User Management
Account Manager #
For a successful discovery, you must provide all relevant account logins in the Account Manager tool, located under Settings > Account-Manager.
To add an account, click the blue +Add Account button on the top right corner of the page. Select the account type, and then choose a source. For local sources, you will only need to provide a user name and password. For Centrify, Cyberark, and PEMKey sources, you will need to enter additional required information and a refresh rate to ensure a successful discovery. For PEM Key authentication, you will need to upload a PEM Key file for successful authentication.
When providing account details, you must apply them to a new or existing group. Groups are used to define related applications and hosts when analyzing discovery information. When adding accounts to a group, select the existing group from the drop-down list or enter the new group name.
Entering account details in Account-Manager
Discovery Results #
Matilda Discover organizes the results of each discovery into a number of useful formats. Whether your environment is on-premise or in the cloud, Discover provides a list of hosts for each discovery. To view these details, navigate to the Discover page by clicking Discover in the main menu. You will see a summary of prechecks and discoveries at the top of the page, and a list of all your discoveries along with their corresponding precheck results and number of discovered hosts.
The Discover page and list of discoveries
To view the details of a discovery, click the 👁 View button to the right of the discovery in the list. At the top right corner of the page, you can click to toggle between dashboard view and list view. The list view shows details for each host, including the operating system, host name, IP address, number of applications (with tagging feature), services, device type, storage, memory, vCPU number, and authentication results. Clicking the 👁 View button on the right end of the row will navigate you to the Host Details page, providing an in-depth view of the host and its services that compose the application. You can also click the 3 Dots button on the right to manage utilization and download host details.
The overview details on the discovery Dashboard view
The rich details of the Discovery List View and relevant hosts
Host Details #
Matilda Discover provides extensive details regarding the hosts found during discovery. The table below describes what details are provided in each section of the host pages. Navigate to the host details by clicking the 👁 View icon in the host list or instance list.
| Host & Instance Details | Description |
| Access the different details by clicking the orange Switch button on the right side of the host or instance page | |
| Overview | Displays the details of the discovered instances, visual representations of instance utilization, CPU, memory and storage utilization, and an overview of storage, network, services, packages, users, ports, certificates, and other details |
| Storage | View the file system information, for example /Dev/Root, and the total storage used and available |
| Network | This tab shows a detailed view of network details collected during discovery |
| Services | View details of the various services collected during discovery, including sections for application services, custom services, and system services |
| »Application Services | In this section, the user can view details of Application servers, Web Servers and Database servers |
| »Custom Services | In this section, the user can view the custom services that are running on the system. These are not default configured system services. The user can click on the icon and mark them as system services |
| »System Services | In this section, the user can view system default services configured on the instance |
| Users | This tab shows a complete view of user details collected during discovery |
| Ports | View ports and port communication, as well as details including the local address, local service, process name, foreign address, port communication direction, status, and protocol |
| Packages | Shows a complete view of package details collected during discovery |
| Login History | Provides a complete view of login history details collected during discovery |
| Certificates | This tab shows a detailed view of certificate details collected during discovery |
| Jobs | View any scheduled jobs/tasks on the instance |
| Variables | Provides a complete view of environment variable details. |
| Containers | [Coming Soon] |
| Dependency | View a dependency map providing a graphical representation of the application and its upstream and downstream dependencies |
| Others | Provides a detailed view of processes on the system, services such as software and applications installed on the system, and uptime services information |
The Overview page in Host Details
Topology Mapping #
Matilda Discover showcases powerful topology mapping tools to provide visual representations of the environment and its complexities. The conceptual example below shows the topological view of an application and the underlying resources supporting it. By expanding the nodes, you are able to see the many instances and services supporting the application.
Selecting the topology view of the Kubernetes service
The following image depicts the same Kubernetes service and components from the services view under Assets > Services.
Expanding the Deployments instance in the Topology view of the Kubernetes service
Applications #
After starting a discovery, applications will appear in the Groups and Verified tabs in the main menu under Applications. You can view all applications in the list view and app-to-app view, and you can also view verified applications in a detail view or in the dashboard view (pictured below). The dashboard provides recommendations and insights into the migration complexity and migration strategy, as well as total cost of ownership insights over time.
The Dashboard View of verified applications, including cost of ownership and migration insights
Application Assessments #
To view detailed insights for each application, simply expand the application row in the list view (via Groups or Verified), and then click the 3 Dots icon to reveal the Assessment Review option. If you are unable to click this option, you may need to run the assessment first by selecting Run Assessment.
Locating Assessment Review in a list of applications
Assessments provide an abundance of information on the selected application. The table below provides an overview of the results and insights provided within each assessment.
| Application Assessment Review Features | ||
| Page | Tab | Description |
| Overview | Hosts | Describes current utilization in vCPUs (#), Memory (GB), Disk (GB); device type (physical/virtual); number of hosts and operating systems (expiration); graphical overview of application(s); list of applications |
| Services | Number of services by type and expiration status; graphical overview of service types and expiration status; list view of services | |
| Connections | Map of connections, server type, application type, and network | |
| Topology | Collapsible/expandable topology map of application(s) | |
| Dependency | Dependency map of application(s); list view; inbound; outbound | |
| Undiscovered Hosts | List of related hosts outside of IP range | |
| Profile | Application Details | Application name; application code; business group; application owner; environment |
| Criticality | Select criticality; select application maturity; assign application users count | |
| Complexity | Select application complexity; select KLOC (lines of code for the application) | |
| Migration Usage | Select availability; select performance; select migration ease; select application control; assign target deployment | |
| Elasticity | Select periodic processing (Y/N); select elasticity (Y/N); select unpredictable bursts (Y/N); select periodic availability (Y/N) | |
| Integration | Select hardware integration (Y/N); select integration complexity; select integration ease; select integration type; select SOA (Y/N); assign number of integration interfaces | |
| Security | Select SLA; select security; select compliance (SOCX/HIPPA/Other); select CompliantToMigrate (Y/N) | |
| Others | Select migration risk; select optimal utilization; select strategic alignment; select change rate; select business support; select technology support available (Y/N); select IsVirtualizationPossible (Y/N); select cloud suitability (Y/N); select lifecycle; assign technology | |
| Assessments | Assessments Page | Provides a list of assessments with their details, as well as options for re-running and search feature |
| Sizing | Overview (top) | Application/Group name; verification status; migration strategy if applicable; cloud provider |
| List | Customize instance list to view annual cost; toggle cost recommendations (Like to Like, Right Sizing, Customer Preferred); toggle instance service type (PaaS/Iaas/All); view instance details; customize recommendations; edit sizing | |
| Architecture | Current | View expandable topology map of current application(s); apply filters |
| Proposed | View topology map of proposed application(s) along with migration tags (rehost, etc); apply filters | |
Verified Applications #
Verified applications will appear under the Verified tab under Applications. Moving discovered Applications to verified status happens in two ways. In the first way, any applications provided with names during the on-boarding process will be moved to verified by default. Otherwise the auto grouping process for assets must be reviewed by the user. These applications can be verified by providing the application name within their group.
Application Assessment Features #
The Assessment Overview page for a specific application
Selecting sizing options in the application sizing tool
Current application architecture topology
Proposed application architecture topology
Applications Settings #
Matilda Discover enables the setting of rules, the creation of profile templates, and the addition of managed applications and managed services for the discovered environment. To access application settings, select Applications > Settings in the main menu. In the settings, you can add processes, ports and IP addresses under Dependency Rules, and add details and rules for templates, applications and services under their respective tabs.
Selecting elasticity settings for a new profile in the Applications Settings
Instances #
Matilda Discover provides valuable insights regarding instances by supporting three useful viewing options of discovered instances. By toggling between the Dashboard View, List View, and Right Sizing View, you can view both high level details and specific details on an instance-by-instance basis, and consider long-term cost of ownership information for the discovered instances.
The Instances Dashboard View provides general infrastructure usage information, as well as yearly costs for on-premise and right-sizing configurations. The Dashboard View also displays the migration strategy and priority, as well as operating system and service expiration breakdowns.
The Instances Dashboard View
The Instances List View provides information regarding each instance, such as its operating system, host IP and host name. You can also edit instance information, view and run reports, and view the host details by clicking the 3 dots on the right side of the instance list row.
The Instances Right Sizing View provides insightful cost of ownership information and migration recommendations for like to like and right sizing options. In this view, you can view on-demand, reserved 1-year, and reserved 3-year right sizing metrics as pictured below. Expanding each instance will reveal rich details and a right sizing comparison.
Instances Right Sizing View with Reserved 3 Year selected and an instance expanded
Services #
Matilda Discover also allows you to view and add services on your discovered environment. To view and add services, click the Services tab under Assets in the main menu. The services page provides a list of application level services, custom services, and system services.
Adding Services #
To add a service, click the Services Managing button at the top right of the application services page. Enter the IP address, server type, service type, path and application group. You can also add ports to the service.
Databases #
Clicking the Databases tab under Assets in the main menu will display the list of databases. Clicking the 3 Dots icon will enable the initiation of the database, editing, and viewing database details and dependency mapping of down stream and up stream dependencies. Both List View and Dashboard View are available for databases in Matilda Discover.
Software #
Navigating to the Software tab under Assets in the main menu will provide a list of all software on the environment, as well as its version, repository, and number of instances.
Reports #
WIth Matilda Discover, you can generate reports composed of data collected during the discovery process.
General & Advanced Reports #
To create a new report, simply navigate to the General reports page, and click Create New at the top of the page. You will need to name the report, pick a report type, and select the cloud type (this step is not necessary for inventory reports). The General page also shows a list of all past reports, as well as a summary of the number of reports completed, submitted, in progress, and failed.
Creating a new report
You can also view and download advanced reports under the Advanced tab. Advanced reports provide an evaluation of services, applications or instances, and inform you on which services are active or expired, assess application migration strategies, and evaluate instance CPU utilization.
Advanced reporting in Matilda Discover
Dynamic Report Builder #
Matilda Discover also enables you to build dynamic reports under the Dynamic reports tab. Dynamic reports are completely customizable using the Blocks, Reports, Dashboards and Connections tabs. Their customizability enables an infinite number of ways to draw valuable insights on the discovered environment.
- Create blocks and add them to a custom group. Select the type of report you would like to display, such as pie chart, bar chart, or table.
- Build detailed reports or summary reports, and choose a layout to depict the desired information.
- Create public or private dashboards with various layout options
- Configure connections by selecting a platform/plugin and supplying connection and login details
Creating Dashboards and Blocks in the Dynamic Report Builder
Settings & Configuration #
Under the Settings tab in the main menu, you will find the tools to add/change configurations around total cost of ownership, manage cloud providers, operating systems, services, hardware details, global variables and ports, and view/edit/add accounts based on your privileges.
To change and configure the settings, select the relevant tab and click the blue manage button in the top right corner of the page. You will need to enter required details for each added/managed configuration.
TCO Settings #
Adding Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) settings in Matilda Discover is a two step process involving entering details around the server and specifying instance and storage strategy. These settings are customizable in order to best support your requirements around migrating to the cloud.
Support #
Matilda Cloud support is offered by email during working hours Monday-Friday. Please contact info@matildacloud.com for assistance.