20.08 (12.1) enhancements

This section describes the new features and enhancements that are available in BMC Discovery version 20.08 (12.1).

BMC Discovery 20.08 (12.1) runs on CentOS 7. You can upgrade directly to BMC Discovery version 20.08 (12.1) from version 11.3 if the version 11.3 appliance is running on CentOS 7. If the 11.3 appliance was upgraded from an earlier version and it is running on CentOS 6, you must install BMC Discovery 20.08 (12.1) and then migrate your data. To migrate your data, you must back up the CentOS 6 based appliance and restore it to a new BMC Discovery appliance running on CentOS 7.  

If you are new to BMC Discovery, we recommend that you see Getting started as an introduction to using the product.

Discover EC2 hosts by using AWS Systems Manager (SSM)

You can discover EC2 hosts by using Amazon Web Services (AWS) Systems Manager (SSM). This feature enables you to perform a detailed discovery of EC2 hosts running on AWS, without the requirement for a direct SSH connection. You can discover your entire AWS estate by using your existing AWS credentials and there are no additional credentials to manage. You are no longer limited to hosts with a public IP address. You can also discover multiple Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) from an instance of BMC Discovery.

In earlier versions of BMC Discovery, you could scan the hosts running on AWS without using AWS SSM, but it required a direct SSH connection from BMC Discovery. Also, it was limited to hosts with a public IP address and required SSH ports, host credentials, and EC2 key pairs.

Currently, Linux and BSD platforms are scanned, while Windows is not supported.

For more information, see Discovering EC2 hosts by using AWS Systems Manager.

Introducing 'identity scope' to manage overlapping IP spaces

BMC Discovery uses an identity scope to distinguish between overlapping IP address spaces. The scope forms a constraint on an IP address, thus enabling duplicate IP addresses to be distinguished. EC2 hosts use the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) ID as their scope. You can assign a scope for Outposts and scanning appliances. The scope is a simple string with specific meanings for values that are used by default. For more information on setting the scope, see Configuring discovery settings and Performing a discovery run.

In earlier releases of BMC Discovery, IP address space was treated as flat. As a result, duplicate IP addresses could cause problems, such as hosts linked to the wrong subnets or incorrect communication links. For more information, see Overlapping IP addresses.

Synchronization to ServiceNow CMDB by using the IRE API

The Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) API enables the ServiceNow CMDB to combine BMC Discovery's data with other data sources.

Report changes

For information about changes that have been made to the predefined reports provided in the product, see Report changes.

Deprecated features

• CiscoWorks import was deprecated in BMC Discovery 11.0 and removed in version 20.02 (12.0). If you have any legacy imported CiscoWorks network devices, you should remove them. For more information, see Configuring after upgrade.
• The BMC Discovery export framework is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. For new exports or integrations, you must use the REST API.