The present invention provides for discovering diagnostic port functionality in a distributed system. A computer system requests network addresses for one or more chassis. A chassis receives the request for a network address and returns a corresponding network address at least for the chassis. The computer system receives one or more network addresses corresponding to the one or more chassis. The computer system requests resource data from each of the one or more corresponding network addresses. The chassis receives the request for resource data and returns resource data representing at least the current configuration of the chassis to the requesting computer system. The computer system receives resource data representing the configuration of the one or more chassis. The computer system presents the received resource data at the requesting computer system.