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Discovery probes and sensors › Using Discovery › Discovery › ITOM Visibility › IT Operations Management
Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

List of Discovery probes

A wide variety of probes exist for the Discovery application to detect elements on your network.

These probes are included with the Discovery application.

The PPP script designation in the table indicates whether the probe includes a probe post-processing (PPP) script that runs on the MID Server. The PPP script transforms probe results into a JSON string and returns the string to the ServiceNow instance for sensor processing.

To view probes and their descriptions, navigate to Discovery Definition > Probes.

  • CIM probe
    The CIM probe uses WBEM protocols to query a particular CIM server, the CIM Object Manager, for a set of data objects and properties.
  • DNS probe
    DNS probes determine the DNS names for configuration items (CI).
  • Horizontal Pattern probe
    Discovery uses the Horizontal Pattern probe to launch patterns for horizontal discovery.
  • PowerShell probe
    The PowerShell Probe executes PowerShell V2 scripts on the MID Server host.
  • SCPRelay probe
    The SCP Relay Probe copies a single file or the contents of a directory from one host to another, using the MID Server as a relay.
  • SNMP probes
    The SNMP probes use the SNMP protocol to query a particular device for a list of OIDs, which are then traversed and the results passed back to the sensors. MID Servers support all SNMP protocol versions by default. You can set a MID Server to only support specific versions of SNMP.
  • SSHCommand probe
    A probe using the ECC queue topic name SSHCommand executes a shell command on the target host, and returns the resulting output to the sensor.
  • vCenter probes and probe parameters
    vCenter probes scan virtual machines using VMware's vSphere product suite. Each probe scans for different kinds of data, such as networks, NICs, and tags. The VMware - vCenter probe that discovered all vCenter objects in previous releases is deprecated in the Istanbul release and replaced by multiple probes.
  • Windows probes and permissions
    Discovery accesses devices and software by executing commands as a specific user on Windows computers.
  • WMIRunner probe
    WMI Runner is a probe type that fetches data from Windows operating systems via the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface. IPv6 supports WMI Runner.
  • Port probes
    Port probes are used in Discovery by the Shazzam probe to detect protocol activity on open ports on devices it encounters.

Parent Topic:Discovery probes and sensors