Service Pack 1: version 8.9.01
This topic contains information about fixes and updates in Service Pack 1 (product version 8.9.01), and provides instructions for downloading and installing the service pack.
Tip
For information about issues corrected in this service pack, see Known and corrected issues.
To install additional product fixes, you can install rolling updates on top of BMC Server Automation 8.9.01.68. For information about rolling update (RU) 3, included product fixes, and installation instructions, see BSA 8.9.01 Rolling Update 3 (RU3).
Build information
The following table lists build information for Service Pack 1 for version 8.9.
Release | Build number | EPD version number | Release date |
---|---|---|---|
Service Pack 1 for version 8.9 | 8.9.01.68 | 8.9.01 | May 17, 2017 |
Enhancements
The following topics describe the updates and enhancements included in this service pack:
Category | Update | Description | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Live Reporting Dashboard | A new installer for installing and configuring the Live Reporting dashboard | The Live Reporting installer simplifies and improves the installation experience by providing a centralized UI for installing and configuring the Live Reporting dashboard. You are no longer required to manually install and configure the Yellowfin database to support the Live Reporting dashboard. This operation is automatically performed by the Live Reporting installer. For more information about the running the Live Reporting installer, see Installing and configuring Yellowfin to enable Live reporting (for versions 8.9.01 and later). | ||||||||
Live Reporting Dashboard | Controlling the inclusion of newly created server groups in filtering | A new blasadmin parameter named To shorten the list of server groups when filtering, use the following command: In this command, you change the default value of Note the following points:
| ||||||||
Security | Support for TLS 1.2 | BMC Server Automation now supports version 1.2 of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol for session layer security across the various communications legs between BMC Server Automation components. After installing or upgrading to BMC Server Automation 8.9.01, TLS version 1.2 is the default protocol for communication between the Application Servers and the RSCD Agents. Earlier versions of TLS are supported, for backward compatibility, in the following scenarios:
In the case of an upgrade to 8.9.01, ensure that the Network Shell component is upgraded to version 8.9.01 on the computer that hosts the BMC Server Automation Console, to support the new default protocol used by the RSCD Agent. The Network Shell is normally upgraded together with the BMC Server Automation Console. If you want to override the default behavior (outlined above) for communication between Application Servers and agents of version 8.9.01 — for example, if you want to limit all communication to TLS 1.2 with no option for use of earlier versions of the TLS protocol — you must configure various properties on your agents and also on your Application Servers, as described in Configuring use of TLS version 1.2. | ||||||||
Licensing | New information in license reports | The detailed license reports that you generate using BLCLI commands Utility agentLicenseUsageReportByAbsoluteDateRange and Utility agentLicenseUsageReportByRelativeDateRange have been enhanced with timestamp information for the four usage modules (Configuration, Compliance, Provisioning, and Patching). A new column for each of the four modules presents the last time that the module was used on each server where it was commissioned during the period of time covered by the report. | ||||||||
OS support | Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2016 | Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2016 was added in the following components and functionalities in BMC Server Automation:
For the complete list of supported platforms, see Supported platforms for version 8.9. | ||||||||
Application Server | ||||||||||
Patch management | ||||||||||
Provisioning | ||||||||||
Virtualization | ||||||||||
OS support | Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Little Endian | BMC Server Automation now supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 with Little Endian architecture. | ||||||||
OS support | Patch management support for Oracle Enterprise Linux 7 | The patch management functionality in BMC Server Automation now supports Oracle Enterprise version 7. | ||||||||
Patch management | ||||||||||
Virtualization | Support for VMWare vSphere version 6.5 | The Virtualization functionality in BMC Server Automation now supports VMWare vSphere version 6.5 on all supported operating systems. | ||||||||
Compliance Content | CIS template updates to newer benchmarks | The following component templates for the CIS policy have been updated to more recent benchmarks:
For the complete list of available templates, see Compliance policy standards supported by BMC Server Automation templates. | ||||||||
SCAP compliance | Support for OVAL version 5.11.1 | BMC Server Automation now supports schemas for all OVAL versions until 5.11.1. | ||||||||
Object properties | New properties in several product objects | Several intrinsic properties have been added to the following system objects:
In these system objects, the following properties were added:
These properties already existed in other object types — the CVE_IDS* existed in the Windows Bulletin object, and the other properties existed in the Server object. They have been added to the BLPackage, NSH Script, and Component Template objects for the purpose of enabling integration with the auto-mapping feature for vulnerability management in the SecOps Dashboard of BMC BladeLogic Portal. For more details about these properties, see Intrinsic properties. | ||||||||
Patch management | New property for choice of patching tool in the Linux Patch Analysis Job | A new intrinsic property was introduced in the Patch Analysis Job for Linux platforms. This property, OTHER_LINUX_ANALYSIS_PATCHING_TOOL* in the OtherLinuxPatchingJob property class, reflects your choice of patching tool for the job — either Zypper or Yum. The OTHER_LINUX_ANALYSIS_PATCHING_TOOL* property accepts the following Values:
| ||||||||
Patch management | Support for native YUM | BMC Server Automation now supports the use of native YUM as the patching tool for deploying patches to target Linux servers. Prior to this release of BMC Server Automation, native YUM was supported only on Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7, and it is now supported on the following types and versions of Linux servers:
Support for native yum is available for yum versions 3.2.22 and later. The blyum utility, a custom binary that was used until now in BMC Server Automation for patch deployment to many types of target Linux servers, is now used only if no supported native YUM is detected on the target Linux server. If you want to override this default behavior and use blyum as the patching tool even when a native YUM exists on the target server, you can set the intrinsic server property PATCHING_TOOL_INSTALL_LOCATION* with the path to blyum (<installpath>/bin/blyum, typically /opt/bmc/bladelogic/RSCD/bin/blyum). Alternatively, you can use this server property to specify the path to a different yum. | ||||||||
Patch management | Patch analysis file archiving | During patch analysis on Linux (on all types of Linux except for Ubuntu and Debian) or Windows target servers, a set of temporary analysis files are created on each target server. Prior to version 8.9.01 of BMC Server Automation, this set of analysis files was deleted at the end of the Patch Analysis Job run, unless the job was set to run in DEBUG mode. As of version 8.9.01, these patch analysis files are archived, and the files from the 3 most recent job runs are stored in the target agent's Transactions directory, in a subdirectory named analysis_archive. A pair of blasadmin parameters enable you to control the archiving mechanism. For more information, see Archiving mechanism for patch analysis files and Controlling patch analysis file archiving. | ||||||||
Patch | RHEL patch analysis optimizations for include and exclude | BMC Server Automation can automatically select the appropriate rpm version or versions while including or excluding an rpm package in an RHEL patch analysis job. To enable this version optimization, select the By Package Name Only option while including or excluding patches. Whenever any rpm package is selected with the By Package Name Only option, BMC Server Automation automatically performs the following:
You can still individually specify rpm versions for include or exclude by selecting the By Complete Package Name option. When this option is selected, BMC Server Automation does not automatically include or exclude any rpm version that is not manually selected by the user from the catalog. Whenever any rpm package is selected with the By Complete Package Name option, BMC Server Automation automatically performs the following:
Important The exclude operation takes precedence over the include operation. Therefore, If a package is excluded with the By Package Name Only option, all versions of the package will be excluded from analysis, even if specific versions are manually included. To see some examples with screenshots, see Patching Job - Analysis Options for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise. | ||||||||
Jobs | Updates in job logging | The following updates have been introduced in job logging:
| ||||||||
Database | Database cleanup enhancement | During online database cleanup, various cleanup-related log messages are saved in the DBM_RUN_LOG table. This table is now cleaned up as well during subsequent cleanups of historical data (any cleanup mode that runs the Delete cleanupHistoricalData command) or cleanups of the database (any cleanup mode that runs the Delete cleanupDatabase command). Log messages from the last 4 cleanup runs of each object type are retained. For more information, see Types of data commonly included in cleanups. | ||||||||
General | Third-party software updates | The following third-party software that are shipped with BMC Server Automation have been updated:
| ||||||||
BLCLI | New or updated BLCLI commands | The following changes have been applied to BLCLI commands:
|
Downloading the service pack
Service Pack 1 for version 8.9 includes full installers for all components. You can download the files for version 8.9.01 from the BMC Server Automation 8.9.01 download page at the BMC Electronic Product Distribution (EPD) website.
For full download instructions, see Downloading the installation files.
For a list of installation programs by OS, see Installation programs for BMC Server Automation.
Installing the service pack as a fresh product installation
If you are installing this service pack as a fresh product installation, do one of the following:
- To use a centralized UI for installation of most BMC Server Automation components, see Installing using the unified product installer.
- To install individual components, download the service pack files and then follow the instructions in Installing individual components. To see an overview of the installation steps, see Walkthrough: Installing individual components for Microsoft Windows and SQL Server environments or Walkthrough: Installing individual components for Linux and Oracle environments, depending on your environment.
Upgrading to the service pack
The following figure illustrates the supported upgrade paths to BMC Server Automation 8.9.01.
To upgrade, do one of the following:
- To use a centralized UI for installation of most BMC Server Automation components, see Upgrading on Windows using the unified product installer. For step by step instructions based on platform, see Walkthrough: Upgrading to version 8.9 for Microsoft Windows and Walkthrough: Upgrading to version 8.9 for Linux.
- To install individual components, download the service pack files and then follow the instructions in Upgrading using individual component installers. To see an overview of the installation steps, see Walkthrough: Upgrading using the configurator and individual component installers.
Using with BMC Decision Support for Server Automation 8.9
BMC Decision Support for Server Automation version 8.9.00 is not compatible with BMC Server Automation version 8.9 SP1. BMC Decision Support for Server Automation (BDSSA) customers must install a hotfix on BDSSA 8.9, before installing or upgrading to BMC Server Automation 8.9.01. For more information about the hotfix, see this page in the BDSSA documentation.
Comments