Glossary · System coordination, integration and orchestration
Service discovery
Also known as: Discovery
German: Diensterkennung
In networked and distributed systems, service discovery is the mechanism by which clients find available services, servers or devices and their network addresses and capabilities at runtime, without fixed configuration, through a registry or network announcements.
- System integration
In one sentence
Service discovery lets clients find available services, servers or devices and their addresses and capabilities at runtime.
Example
An engineering tool uses an OPC UA discovery server to list all OPC UA servers on the plant network together with their endpoints and security policies.
How it applies
- Engineering: Mechanisms include central registries (for example OPC UA discovery servers or service registries in container platforms) and network announcements (multicast DNS). Industrial fieldbuses have their own device discovery, such as DCP in PROFINET.
- Security: Discovery reveals what exists on a network. Restrict it to the zones where it is needed, and don't expose discovery services across zone boundaries without a reason.
- Operation: Registries must remove services that disappear; stale entries lead clients to unreachable endpoints.
- Documentation: Describe which discovery mechanisms a product uses, which ports and protocols they need and how to disable them where the security concept requires it. IT and OT administrators rely on this information.
Service discovery vs. self-description
Service discovery answers "what is out there and where?" Self-description answers "what can this component do and how do I use it?" Discovery usually comes first, then the client reads the self-description.