Discovery: The Infrastructure View
Discovery scans your network and infrastructure — hosts, processes, network gear, databases, apps. It populates cmdb_ci_* classes with current state. Primary benefit: a live infrastructure inventory.
Best fit: orgs with sprawling hybrid infra who need a single source of truth.
Service Mapping: The Logical View
Service Mapping models how individual CIs combine into business services. ‘Online Banking’ is a service; its map shows the web app, middleware, database, and network gear required to deliver it.
Service maps answer questions Discovery can’t: ‘If that switch fails, what services break?‘
When Discovery Alone Is Enough
Small to mid infrastructure, simple services, or a new CMDB. Start with Discovery. Adding Service Mapping before CI data is clean creates maps built on sand.
When Service Mapping Earns It
You have dozens of business services, multiple owners, complex interdependencies, and outage blast radius matters for prioritization. Service Mapping becomes your capacity planning, outage triage, and change impact tool.
Using Them Together
Most mature orgs run both. Discovery feeds Service Mapping with current CI data. Service Mapping adds the logical layer. Governance: Discovery owned by infrastructure; Service Mapping owned by service owners.