Release notes and notices

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Use blueprint-based modeling to model services.
• Restrict Outposts to organizations and limit discovery scans. This enhancement is available only if you access BMC Helix Discovery from BMC Helix Portal.
• Create and upload custom reports.
• Improvements in Start Anywhere Modeling:

  • See combined software and infrastructure in a single view with Display > Focuses.

    • Turn individual types of data on or off.

    • Choose to see only incoming or only outgoing impacts.

    • Mixed focuses.

  • 'Directly Connected' focus allows you to see all the relationships of any node.

  • 'Provenance' focus shows how data is inferred.

• Improvements in visualizations, such as mixed focuses.
• Miscellaneous improvements:
  • New and enhanced REST APIs, such as the ability to import topology information.
  • Set default values for the Cloud Host Detection and VMWare Guest scanning options.

The following enhancement is available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• For users who access BMC Helix Discovery from BMC Helix Portal, an in-app help is available from a floating widget at the bottom of every screen.

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Perform deep discovery of VMWare guest hosts by using the vCenter API.
• Disable cloud host detection for individual scans. For information, see Performing a discovery run.
• Miscellaneous enhancements:
  • Improvement in the default sensitive data filters for processes and files.
  • BMC Helix Discovery uses only the applicable methods to retrieve information when scanning endpoints.
  • The npcap tool is upgraded to version 1.71.
  • The external REST APIs are defined by using OpenAPI 3.0 rather than Swagger 2.0.
  • Installation of BMC Discovery Outpost is supported on a Windows Server Core platform.

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Disable cloud host detection for individual scans. For information, see Performing a discovery run.
• Mainframe Connection Linking is license-free and enabled by default.
• Miscellaneous enhancements, such as BMC Helix Discovery uses only the applicable methods to retrieve information when scanning endpoints, BMC Helix Discovery uses only the applicable AWS or GCP methods when discovering EC2 hosts or hosts in GCP, and the npcap tool is upgraded to version 1.71.

The following miscellaneous enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Manage credentials on BMC Discovery Outpost by using REST API.
• Manage scheduled scans and exclude ranges by using an enhanced REST API.
• Discover Windows EC2 hosts by using AWS Systems Manager API.
• Supported BMC Discovery Outpost host is now Windows Server 2016 and later. 

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Discover Google Compute Engine hosts running in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) by using Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) and Identity and Access Management (IAM), without a direct SSH connection.
• Enhanced mainframe discovery includes discovering and modeling of observed communication between mainframe and distributed components.
• Intelligent discovery of cloud services by region.
• BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations  enabled .
• Miscellaneous enhancements, such as support for namespaces in HashiCorp Vault Enterprise, new TPL function to discover TLS certificate data, and so on.

This release of BMC Helix Discovery provides support for Kerberos authentication for discovery credentials. The Kerberos authentication protocol is available for target discovery using SSH credentials.

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Integration with a new third-party credential manager, HashiCorp Vault.
• Support for OpenShift OAuth authentication, which simplifies the discovery of Red Hat OpenShift clusters.

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Discover Windows hosts using PowerShell. Use the new PowerShell credential in preference to using Windows credentials, such as WMI and RemQuery.
• Discover container platforms like Kubernetes and OpenShift using API providers.
• Improved SAAM (start anywhere application modeling) with a new ability to model Business Services and Business Services (Technical).
• Model changes supporting the new service modeling capabilities
  
• Support for new REST API endpoints for data import and general data manipulation.
• Support for new TPL functions to handle JSON data and expose the node identity algorithm.
• FIPS compliant and certified BMC Discovery Outpost.
  

This release of BMC Helix Discovery is provided for BMC Helix AIOps users only.

The version of BMC Helix Discovery provided for BMC Helix AIOps users provides the following enhancements:

• Start anywhere application modeling has new service modeling capabilities 
• Licensing limitations. The version of BMC Helix Discovery provided for BMC Helix AIOps users is not intended to be used for discovery. It is only intended for service modeling using data from BMC Helix AIOps. Consequently, you cannot download a BMC Discovery Outpost from the UI.

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• Discover EC2 hosts by using AWS Systems Manager (SSM)
• Introducing the ability to manage overlapping IP spaces using 'identity scope'
• Synchronize to ServiceNow CMDB by using the IRE API
• Allowed IP addresses

The following features are available in this initial release of BMC Helix Discovery:

• BMC Helix Discovery service
• BMC Helix Discovery Outpost
• BMC Helix Discovery security
• Out of the box discovery capabilities