An improved technique for managing an electronic system suitable for providing users with information technology resources, such as compute, storage, and network resources, builds an object model instance of data center components to represent the data center components as a unified entity, which administrators can access as a single-point source for information about the components. In some examples, the object model instance also serves as a single-point for management control of the electronic system. The object model instance is populated with information obtained from a discovery process, where components are queried to report their actual configuration and state, as well as physical and logical relationships among them.