Serverless Discovery

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated June 16, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Serverless Discovery

    Serverless Discovery enables ServiceNow customers to discover application Configuration Items (CIs) on host machines without first discovering the host itself. It leverages infrastructure patterns to directly explore CIs, bypassing the traditional scanning and classification phases of Discovery. There are two types of serverless Discovery:

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    • Standard serverless Discovery: Discovers remote application CIs on unknown hosts using protocols like REST or HTTP without requiring the host’s IP address.
    • Host-based serverless Discovery: Discovers CIs on hosts that have already been discovered, using the host as a proxy without running Discovery directly on it.

    Key Features

    • Standard serverless Discovery: Requires defining input parameters in an infrastructure pattern to connect to remote resources, ideal for discovering web-based applications.
    • Host-based serverless Discovery: Uses infrastructure patterns that specify operations (e.g., WMI queries) executed on an already discovered host. It uses the host’s credentials for Discovery, so no additional credentials are needed.
    • Debugging: When running a pattern in debug mode, details are available under Temporary Variables, enabling creation of pattern operations such as API calls from the host to target CIs.
    • Scheduling: Serverless Discovery is triggered via Discovery schedules with a specific serverless schedule type, ignoring classifiers. This allows setting input parameters for standard serverless Discovery or specifying a host CI for host-based Discovery.

    Practical Application

    Use standard serverless Discovery when you need to discover web applications where the host IP is unknown. Use host-based serverless Discovery when the CIs reside on a host already discovered but may lack IP addresses or are otherwise inaccessible directly. This approach streamlines and accelerates Discovery by focusing on application-level CIs without the overhead of discovering the host first.

    Discovery can find applications on host machines without the need to discover the host first. This type of Discovery is referred to as serverless Discovery.

    Serverless Discovery relies on infrastructure patterns to explore CIs on a host. This kind of Discovery skips the scanning and classification phases of Discovery. There are two types of serverless Discovery: standard and host-based. Both types require an infrastructure pattern.

    Standard serverless Discovery

    Standard serverless Discovery finds remote application CIs that reside on an unknown host. This type of serverless Discovery uses protocols, such as REST or HTTP, to find the CIs. The IP address of the host machine is not required. You define input parameters in an infrastructure pattern to connect to a remote resource. Use this type of Discovery when you want to discover web-based applications.

    Host-based serverless Discovery

    Host-based serverless Discovery finds CIs that reside on a host machine that you already discovered. The host acts as a proxy through which you find other CIs. You do not actually run Discovery on the host. Use this type of Discovery when:
    • You do not know the IP address of the CIs you want to discover, or the CIs do not actually have IP addresses.
    • The CIs reside on an already discovered host CI.

    For this type of Discovery, you also need an infrastructure pattern, but you do not need to define input parameters like you do for standard serverless Discovery. The pattern can specify operations, such as a WMI Query, which executes queries on a host. After Discovery connects to the host, it uses the credentials of the host to perform the Discovery of CIs you are exploring in the pattern. You do not need to specify additional credentials. When you run debug mode on the pattern, you can see the details under Temporary Variables on the pattern. You can then create pattern operations that make API calls from the host to the CIs you are trying to discover.

    Serverless Discovery schedules

    The infrastructure patterns that serverless Discovery uses are triggered from a Discovery schedule, rather than from a classifier. Serverless Discovery ignores classifiers. Use a serverless schedule type for both types of serverless Discovery. The serverless schedule allows you to specify: