Containerized software discovery and identification

A computer-implemented method, comprising: discovering a plurality of container remnants by electronically scanning portions of computer memory of at least one computer system of one or more computing nodes, wherein the portions of computer memory are allocated to persistent storage of computer data, and wherein each container remnant contains computer data providing a record of system-generated execution attributes generated in response to execution of one or more containerized applications; identifying among the plurality of container remnants one or more inactive container remnants unutilized by a currently running application; categorizing each inactive container remnant, wherein the categorizing is based on system-generated execution attributes contained in each container remnant identified as an inactive container remnant; and based on the categorizing, identifying a previously run containerized application by reference to a database comprising data whose structure maps identities of containerized applications to patterns of execution attributes.