Patent ID: 8732215

Claim:
A method for discovering environment objects in a computing environment in order to perform information management, the method comprising: interfacing an information management system with a plurality of adapters, each adapter able to collect information about environment objects in a computing environment, wherein the plurality of adapters are configured differently to collect different types of information or more specific types of information; discovering environment objects using the plurality of adapters, wherein the plurality of adapters are configured to query detected environment objects in order to collect the information; receiving the collected information from the plurality of adapters, the collected information including metadata that describes properties of the discovered environment objects; categorizing each environment object in at least one category based on the collected information, the at least one category used when assigning service levels to other objects in the computing environment; and classifying each of the discovered environment objects to determine which service levels each of the discovered environment objects is able to provide for data objects in the computing environment.