4.6.03 enhancements

Providers (AWS, Azure, OpenStack)

Consistent mechanism for Azure instance type selection

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management supports new instance types that are available in Azure. They can be defined in the AzureInstanceTypeMetaData.json file. The CPU and Memory specifications are read as blueprint configuration parameters. The selection first filters the instance type based on the closest match (on the higher side) of memory and then CPU values.

VPN-based private network deployments

A cloud administrator can secure management traffic to external, public cloud-based resources, which might have public facing connectivity. Management traffic (application deployments, configuration updates, compliance measurement/remediation, patching, and so on) can be carried out over a VPN tunnel to a specific subnet in the VM network environment.

With a VPN connection in place, the cloud administrator can manage each VM in an Azure Cloud Service individually through BMC Server Automation, instead of managing all the servers of a CloudService under one BMC Server Automation entry.

Support for Network Security Groups (NSGs)

In the earlier versions, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management only supported opening endpoints on the VM for Azure implementations. Starting with this release, a VM is assigned to a network security group in Azure. The network security group consists of rules that control inbound network traffic from the VM. These security rules require source and destination ports, address, protocol and access (allow/deny). The rules act as endpoint Access Control Lists (ACLs).

Compliance at Service level for Azure, Amazon, and Openstack providers

Cloud administrators can configure compliance standards for Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and OpenStack providers by enrolling the respective servers in BMC Server Automation, and then leveraging the existing BMC Server Automation jobs to accomplish the following:

• Enable compliance and select the compliance type
• View the compliance status report for services and servers with the required details

End users and tenant administrators can only view the compliance status of services and servers. For details, see Monitoring BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management service compliance.

Support for Microsoft Azure Government

When you set up a Microsoft Azure user account, you can now specify the Azure Government URL. A physical and logical network-isolated instance of Azure, operated by screened US persons, Azure Government is a cloud platform that has been specifically designed to meet the needs of US government agencies and their partners.

Support for OpenStack releases

Starting with version 4.6.03, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management has discontinued support for the Icehouse release and added support for the Liberty and Mitaka releases.

Networking

You can add newly added networks to existing network containers. For details, see Scaling an existing network pod.

You can name load balancer pools through the General tab of the Configuration workspace. For details, see Configuration workspace overview and Creating custom logic for load balancer pools.

The performance of firewall rule management was enhanced.

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management now supports the NULL VLAN (VxLAN), which allows you to create a NIC segment without any VLAN in BMC Network Automation to use VxLAN back port profile. For details, see Synchronizing network pods.

Tenant Management

Administrators can allow end users to transfer ownership and request services on behalf of another user. (Previously, only cloud and tenant administrators could do this.) For details, see Giving end users more control over services.

Users can change the description of a service offering instance from the Edit Description action on the My Cloud Services console.

Administrators can also change the description from the Administration Console. 

For details, see Managing cloud resources and Modifying the description of service offering instances in the legacy console.

SDK

To enable the cloud administrator to perform various operations by using SDK commands, this release includes the following changes:

• To restart one or more servers in the specified service, two new commands, service-restart and server-restart are added.
• To allow execution of custom operator actions by using SDK commands, new commands are added.

The following APIs are newly added in this release:

• Action executeOnce
• LogicalServerFarm customize

The following APIs are updated in this release:

• The ServiceOffering create API includes new parameters that help you to set the Change Policy, add keywords, and so on.
• The ManagementApplication class API includes new parameters that show the version number up to the hotfix level for BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management and the key components (BMC Network Automation, BMC Server Automation, BMC Atrium Orchestrator, and BMC Remedy AR System Server) included with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. As a result of these enhancements, you see the following changes on the GUI when you click the About button:
  • BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration console—Shows the version of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management up to the patch level (for example, 4.6.03) and the key components  up to the hotfix level (for example, BBSA 8.7.00.256).
  • End User Portal or My Cloud Services console—Shows the version of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management up to the patch level (for example, 4.6.03).
• The Organization delete API includes new parameters that enable you to delete the existing custom provider.

Troubleshooting

To enable tenant administrators and end users to view SOI progress details, a new parameter, activityTimeLineAccessList is added to the providers.json file. This parameter contains a list of the user roles who can access the activity timeline link on the End User Portal.