What's new in this version

OSD Improvements

• New OSD architecture
  As a best practice, only one OSD manager should exist. For legacy installations, your old OSD Managers are still there and usable. Image repositories were added, which eliminate the need for multiple OSD managers in an environment. The OSD proxies are replaced by Network Boot Listeners . Linux and Mac OS X devices can now be and image repository, a network boot listener or both.
• OSD on UEFI-only machines
  Regardless of the boot mechanism OSD should work. If a device supports BIOS, UEFI or both, no additional configuration should be needed to boot the device.
• USB device support
  A self-sufficient USB device can be created, containing both the WinPE and the data to be deployed, either a Windows setup or a WIM image (including sysprep). UEFI and legacy boot are both supported depending on the project.
• Driver by model support
  An additional method of managing the drivers that are assigned to devices has been added. The Drivers by Model method. It is possible to place all needed drivers for a particular model of a device in a single folder. The system will automatically deploy all the drivers to the device, increasing the success of OSD.
• Driver storage optimization
  The storage mechanism for drivers was improved to ensure that drivers are only stored once and are linked to instead of being duplicated. If no objects refer to a stored driver any more, it is deleted as are its physical files.
• Differential file transfers for OS images
  If an image has a small update, only that small portion is transferred across the network to devices, instead of the whole OS image.

Controlled reboots

An administrator can be absolutely certain that devices will not reboot at unexpected times. It is possible to assign a reboot window to a device, or group of devices and control when the device is able to reboot. This overrides any action that is sent to the device, like a patch reboot, or a software installation reboot. Ensuring that there is no way an unexpected or mistaken reboot can occur on a critical device.

• Reboot Windows allow the administrator to define and assign one or several time frames to an individual device or a group of devices, during which a device reboot is permitted or prohibited.
• New parameters were added, which allow to further specify situations in which to limit the automatic reboot.
• If the target device is in full-screen mode, the reboot will automatically be postponed.

Instant Experts

The following Instant Experts were updated or added:

• Administrators
• Administrator Groups
• Operating System Deployment
• SCAP Compliance

Operational rule improvements

The following operational rule steps added:

• Logging Configuration : This step configures the default parameters for agent logging for all log files.
• Device Clean-up : This step allows you to delete direct and indirect members from selected device groups. Optionally, if the deprecate device option is selected, the devices are deprecated instead of deleted.
• Device Clean-up : This step allows you to delete direct and indirect members from selected device groups. Optionally, if the deprecate device option is selected, the devices are deprecated instead of deleted.

Parameters were added to the following operational rule steps:

• Non-intrusive Reboot Mode Configuration
• Delete Directory
• Execute Program
• Execute Program As User
• Advanced Registry Management
• Registry Key Verification
• Registry Management
• Load/Unload Module
• Check Operating System

Miscellaneous improvements:

• Software License Management now allows you to define and track specific versions of applications using the Software Catalog.
• Under financial asset management it is now possible to add custom life-cycle status values and it is possible to manually change the current value.
• The Client Management agent is now automatically restarted if it stops unexpectedly.
• New reports were added to the SCAP Compliance functionality.
• The console and browser agent interface have a completely new look'n feel.
• Windows 10 and Windows 2016 as well as Mac OS Yosemite and El Capitan are now supported.
• A warning was added when manually installing the tablespaces on Oracle.
• The relay list can now be searched multiple times.
• When upgrading the agents, all entries concerning the local agent upgrade are copied to the mtxupgrade.log .
• The complete documentation is now available online as a wiki on docs.bmc.com .
• When creating a software package the Enable Full Path parameter is unchecked by default.
• The Expand All option was added to the right click menu to all topology types.
• The Device Name was added to the audit log.
• It's now possible to define valid return codes on the Execute Program operational rules.
• A warning message box is displayed on the screen when an operation is to be executed on too many targets.
• The usage of the device menus was simplified.
• The Assignment Type field in the package and operational rules wizard now explicitly distinguishes between assigning and publishing to targets.
• The hard disk serial number is now captured in addition to the volume serial number by default.
• A new patch report was added to the out-of-the-box objects: Patch Group Results .
• The login window is prefilled with the default admin/no password user.
• It is now possible to delete devices also from the Device Topology .