[object Object]

Freshservice offers three discovery mechanisms: the Probe (agentless), the Agent (installed on endpoints), and Cloud Discovery (AWS/Azure/GCP API). None alone gives complete coverage. The right blend depends on your network topology.

When to use the Probe (agentless)

Best for: servers, network gear, printers, IoT devices that you can reach via SNMP/SSH/WMI but cannot install software on.

Limitations: requires a Probe host inside the network, depends on credential vaults, misses anything off-network.

When to use the Agent

Best for: laptops, desktops, BYOD that leave the office, anything that needs software inventory and patch state.

Limitations: deployment overhead, MDM dependency, license cost per endpoint.

When to use Cloud Discovery

Best for: ephemeral cloud assets — EC2, RDS, AKS nodes — that the on-prem probe never sees.

Cloud Discovery setup:
  1. Create read-only IAM role in AWS
  2. Add account in Freshservice → Cloud Discovery
  3. Schedule discovery every 4 hours
  4. Map cloud resources to CI types

The combination strategy

Endpoints (laptops/desktops): Agent
Servers and network gear: Probe
Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP): Cloud Discovery
SaaS apps: SaaS Management add-on or Marketplace integrations

Reconcile by canonical ID

When the same asset is discovered by two mechanisms (an EC2 instance with the agent installed), define the reconciliation rule: prefer the agent for OS and software, prefer cloud for instance type and tags.

{
  "reconciliation_rule": "ec2_with_agent",
  "match_on": ["aws_instance_id", "agent_machine_id"],
  "field_priority": {
    "os": "agent",
    "software": "agent",
    "instance_type": "cloud",
    "tags": "cloud"
  }
}

Stale asset handling

Assets not seen in 30 days should auto-flag as stale, not auto-delete. A workflow assigns a triage task; deletion is a human decision.

Audit completeness

Compare your CMDB count to ground truth quarterly: HR headcount × endpoints/employee, AWS console resource count, network management system asset list. Gaps point to broken discovery jobs.

What to do this week

Map every asset class to its discovery mechanism, set the reconciliation rule for cloud-plus-agent overlaps, configure the 30-day stale flag, and schedule the quarterly completeness audit.

[object Object]
Share