- [Seph] Hey Walter, how's it going? - [Walter] Hey Seph, I'm just curious about something. - [Seph] Oh yeah? What about? - [Walter] I was hoping I could ask you about AWS Migration Hub. - [Seph] Sure. What questions do you have? - [Walter] Well, I remember that Migration Hub provides a single place to discover resources, plan migrations, and track the status of migrations. But I was curious, specifically, about the discovery aspects. - [Seph] So, you want to know how Migration Hub helps you to discover resources so you can gather all of the information? - [Walter] Yeah, exactly. - [Seph] Okay, I'm glad you realized that discovery is an important starting point for migrations. It's crucial to gather detailed server information and then group the discovered servers into appliances to be migrated and tracked. And if you want to gather the data about your servers and applications, there are several discovery tools you can use. - [Walter] Oh yeah. I think I saw some of those. There's one called Migration Hub import, right? - [Seph] Correct. Do you remember anything about it? - [Walter] Only that it helps to get information. - [Seph] It does that, yes. With Migration Hub import, you can import information about your on-premises servers and applications into Migration Hub. This can include important information about server specification and utilization data, and this data can also be used to track the status of application migrations. - [Walter] That sounds great, but how does it gather the information? - [Seph] Migration Hub import doesn't gather the information on its own. It provides a format for you to organize the information you already have, and then give that information to Migration Hub so that it can help in its planning and tracking functions. This allows you to simply download a specially formatted CSV template, populate it with your existing on-premises server data, and then upload it to Migration Hub. - [Walter] What if I don't have this data already? I know that the Migration Evaluator Collector can help, but is that it? - [Seph] Well, in addition to the Migration Evaluator Collector, you also have the AWS Agentless Discovery Connector. - [Walter] How does that work? - [Seph] The Agentless Discovery Connector is a VMware appliance that can collect information about VMware virtual machines. This is installed as a VM in your VMware vCenter server environment, using an open virtualization archive file, or OVA. - [Walter] So this tool, the Discovery Connector, helps me to get information? - [Seph] Yeah, the Discovery Connector can help minimize the time required for initial infrastructure assessment of your on-premises environment. It connects to the vCenter server to collect data about all of the VMs and hosts managed by this specific vCenter, and then securely sends that collected data to the AWS Application Discovery Service. - [Walter] That sounds nice. But what about servers that aren't running on VMware? - [Seph] For that, you could use the AWS Application Discovery Agent. - [Walter] A Discovery Agent? That sounds fun. Does someone just come into my data center and catalog everything that we have? - [Seph] No, it's nothing like that. The Discovery Agent is AWS software that you install on your on-premises servers and VMs to capture system configuration, system performance, running processes, and details of the network connections between systems. The Discovery Agent is great for a broad range of compatibility, as it supports most Linux and Windows operating systems. And you can deploy them on physical on-premises servers, Amazon EC2 instances, and virtual machines. - [Walter] Are any of these more important than the others? - [Seph] I wouldn't view it that way. They're often used together, depending on what information you already have and what you're trying to gather. The Discovery Connector is great for your VMware environments. The Discovery Agent fits in for other types of servers or VMs you may be running. And Migration Hub import works for the information that you already have. - [Walter] Thanks. That really clears up some stuff for me. My last question is, what kind of data is collected by the AWS Application Discovery Agent? - [Seph] The Discovery Agent collects system configuration times, series utilization, performance data, process data, and TCP network connections. Collected data is usually measured in kilobytes, and the polling period is in intervals of approximately 15 minutes. The documentation for all of these services will show you more details about the data fields collected and what they mean. - [Walter] Thanks. I'll go take a look at the documentation, and that's all for me for now. - [Seph] Okay, glad I could help. Bye.