Device discovery is an exploratory method that determines which peripheral devices a host can detect. Detection depends on physical attachment (SCSI, Fibre Channel, and so on) and device state (on and responding or off and not responding). Detection also depends on host operating system device-layer configuration.

The goal of device discovery is to provide information to enable fully or partially automatic configuration of peripherals for use with NetBackup. Device discovery provides data that correlates the devices that are interconnected across multiple hosts or multiple host bus adapters on the same host.

To discover devices, NetBackup issues SCSI pass-through commands through operating system device files (on UNIX) or APIs (on Windows). The storage devices must be attached to the computer and recognized by the operating system. A pass-through path to a device must exist.