# Converting Discovered Resources to Managed Instances

When creating new cloud integrations (or updating existing ones), users may opt for VM Essentials to onboard any existing resources that currently reside in the Cloud. For example, these may be virtual machines that exist on vCenter hosts prior to integration with VM Essentials. With the Add/Edit Cloud modal open, mark INVENTORY EXISTING INSTANCES for VM Essentials to automatically onboard these resources. Not only will VM Essentials inventory these hosts at the time the cloud is integrated (or updated), it will also continue to poll the target cloud every five minutes (by default) for newly added or removed servers. Users can see these discovered servers by looking in Infrastructure > Compute. Depending on the type of resource, it may appear on the Virtual Machines tab, the Containers tab, or another tab. Additionally, we can see a list of discovered servers on Cloud detail pages (Infrastructure > Clouds > Selected Cloud). Just click on the tabs for VMs, Containers or Hosts tab. Discovered resources will be indicated as such whereas containers which are associated with a managed Instance will be marked as a “Managed”.

Additionally, VM Essentials allows users to convert discovered resources into managed Instances. Begin from the server detail page (Infrastructure > Compute > Virtual Machines > selected machine) and from the ACTIONS menu select “Convert to Managed”. At this point, we must make a number of selections:

- Select a Group (this dropdown contains a filtered list of Groups in which the associated Cloud resides)
- Username and password for a seeded account
- Opt to install VM Essentials Agent or not
- Select the Instance Type which should be associated with the new Instance containing this VM
- Identify the operating system
- Select a Plan (this dropdown contains a filtered list of plans which correlate to the size of the VM)

Finally, click EXECUTE. Once this process is completed, the server will be indicated as “Managed” in the servers list. Additionally, a new Instance will appear on the Instances List page (Provisioning > Instances). We can now work with it in the same way we can work with any other Instance, such as by expanding the Instance horizontally with added nodes.
