Application component identification and analysis in a virtualized computing system

A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions to be executed in a computing device to cause the computing device to carry out a method of application identification in a virtualized computing system having a cluster of hosts, the hosts including virtualization layers supporting virtual machines (VMs), the method comprising:

• executing, by application analysis software, process discovery agents for the VMs, the process discovery agents installed in the VMs by the application analysis software;
• receiving, at the application analysis software from the process discovery agents, process metadata describing processes executing on the VMs, the process discovery agents obtaining the process metadata by reading process data structures maintained by guest operating systems of the VMs;
• generating signatures for the processes based on the process metadata;
• and
• determining components of an application based on a comparison of the signatures against known signatures in a signature database.

A virtualized computing system having a cluster comprising hosts connected to a network, the hosts including virtualization layers, the virtualized computing system comprising:

• virtual machines (VMs) executing on the virtualization layers;
• and
• a server configured to execute application analysis software, the application analysis software configured to:
• execute process discovery agents for the VMs, the process discovery agents installed in the VMs by the application analysis software;
• receive, from the process discovery agents, process metadata describing processes executing on the VMs, the process discovery agents obtaining the process metadata by reading process data structures maintained by guest operating systems of the VMs;
• generate signatures for the processes based on the process metadata;
• and
• determine components of an application based on a comparison of the signatures against known signatures in a signature database.