Cloud Foundry discovery with JDisc Discovery

Introduction

Platform-as-a-Service environments can be easy to operate for development teams while remaining difficult to document consistently. Cloud Foundry organizes applications, services, spaces, and organizations behind an API, so an infrastructure inventory needs more than a conventional IP scan to show how the environment is structured.

JDisc Discovery extends its discovery of platform environments with Cloud Foundry support. After you configure access to the Cloud Foundry API and run a dedicated PaaS discovery job, you can review discovered organizations, spaces, applications, and service instances in the Virtualization Explorer. This article explains the configuration and the information that becomes available.

Cloud Foundry is an open-source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) platform. It supports the development, deployment, and scaling of applications across cloud environments and provides automated application lifecycle capabilities.

Configure access to the Cloud Foundry API

Start in the JDisc Discovery settings dialog and open the PaaS tab. This is where you configure access to the Cloud Foundry installation.

Select Add to create a Cloud Foundry API endpoint. Enter a meaningful name and optional comment, then provide the Cloud Foundry API endpoint IP address or hostname, port, user name, and password.

The configured account must have access to the Cloud Foundry spaces, applications, and services that you want to include in discovery. This matters because the resulting inventory reflects the information accessible through that account.

Create a PaaS discovery job

We recommend a separate discovery job for PaaS environments. This keeps the synchronization of Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes information clearly identifiable in your discovery setup.

When creating the job, select Synchronize PaaS. Without this option, JDisc Discovery does not discover Kubernetes or Cloud Foundry instances. Start the new job after saving the configuration to synchronize the available PaaS information.

Review the discovered Cloud Foundry structure

After the job has finished, JDisc Discovery provides data for the Cloud Foundry instance that the configured account can access. The collected information includes:

• organizations and their spaces;
• applications within a space; and
• services within a space.

Open the Virtualization Explorer in the Web UI to review this hierarchy. It lists the Cloud Foundry organizations, spaces, applications, and service instances, helping you understand the logical structure that sits behind the PaaS environment.

Why a dedicated view helps

Cloud Foundry information is organized around application platforms rather than individual network endpoints. Viewing organizations, spaces, applications, and services together makes that structure easier to review in the context in which teams operate it.

Keeping the API endpoint configuration and the PaaS synchronization job separate also gives you a clear operational path: define the scope through the Cloud Foundry account, run the dedicated job, and then inspect the synchronized structure in the Web UI. If you need additional information, you can submit an enhancement request to the JDisc team.

Summary

To discover a Cloud Foundry environment with JDisc Discovery, add the Cloud Foundry API endpoint in the PaaS settings, ensure that the account has the required access, and run a job with Synchronize PaaS selected. The Virtualization Explorer then displays the discovered organizations, spaces, applications, and service instances.