Populating End of Life (EOL) data for Cisco devices

Device vendors regularly publish EOL bulletins for an equipment they support. The bulletins indicate that you need to replace or upgrade that equipment within a reasonable time. BMC Network Automation can help remind you to do this by flagging such devices and populating EOL dates for these devices. For more information, see Populating-End-of-Life-data-for-Cisco-devices.

Updates in the device adapters for better readability of configuration files

The device adapters for Cisco ACI, Cisco ACI- Tenant, VMware NSX, vShield App, and vShield Edge have been updated to properly indent the XML content that is stored in their configuration files. The indentation is achieved by including the new attribute, delegateClassName in the textProcessor tag. For information about this attribute, see Device-type-header-XML-element-reference.

Note: This indentation introduces some discrepancies when comparing configuration files generated after version 8.9.02 against those generated before. If you want to avoid discrepancies, revert to the text processor included in earlier versions. However, BMC recommends to mark the 8.9.02 configuration as the trusted configuration.

Changes in the communication between an SSH client and BMC Network Automation SSH proxy server

For enhanced security, support for the following weak algorithms has been removed from the SSH proxy server:

• Key-exchange algorithms: diffie-hellman-group1-sha1, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1
• Host-key algorithm: ssh-dss
• Message authentication code algorithms: hmac-sha1-96, hmac-sha256-96, hmac-sha512-96

For the supported algorithms in version 8.9.02, see SSH proxy.

Enhanced password encryption

For password encryption, now 128-bit salts are used instead of 64-bit salts.

diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 (key exchange algorithm) available only in non-FIPS mode

In version 8.9.02, diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 is available only when the FIPS mode is set to false because this algorithm is weak and vulnerable to the LOGJAM security vulnerability. For information about supported algorithms in version 8.9.02, see Agent and device communication over SSH.

Control over the type of files to be uploaded in BMC Network Automation

With this release, you can control the type of files you want to be uploaded in BMC Network Automation, as follows:

• OS image files: You can specify whether to restrict OS image files to those that meet file naming criteria. For more information, see the OS Image Filename Filtering parameter in the Export and import section. When you load an OS image file in the OS image library or deploy an OS image, and this parameter is enabled, the file must meet the criteria mentioned in the parameter.
• Stylesheet files: The file must be named with the .xsl extension. For more information, see Adding-or-editing-security-vulnerability-importers.
• Security vulnerability files: When importing, a single file must be named with the .xml extension and a zipped file must be named with the .zip extension. Only contained files named with the .xml extension are processed. For more information, see Importing-security-vulnerabilities.
• Device adapter files: The file must be named with the .xml extension. For more information, see Importing-device-adapters.
• Rule import task file: The file must be named with the .xml extension. For more information, see Adding-a-rule-import-task.

Copy failed jobs

Now, you can create copy of a failed job with only those actions that failed to execute on devices. For more information, see Viewing-the-jobs-listing.

Thread pooling in reports

Alternate home page for the BMC Network Automation GUI

If you typically have many devices (thousands) in a discrepancy state, and the display of your dashboard on the BMC Network Automation GUI takes a noticeable amount of time to display, you can alter the webappAlternateHomePage global property to set it to true. The true value causes the event list page to be the home page. For more information, see Alternate home page for the BMC Network Automation GUI.

Population of memory cache during system startup

Memory cache of the associations between combo group keys and their constituent device keys is now populated during system startup in the background, instead of on demand, as and when the associations are first needed during running of the system. In versions earlier than 8.9.02, on demand population of this cache might cause a noticeable delay in loading certain pages, for instance, the first time when you try to view the details page for a device.

Database isolation level check (for SQL Server only)

The installation program now verifies that the READ COMMITTED SNAPSHOT isolation level of the BMC Network Automation database is set properly. For more information, see Configuring databases for Windows or Configuring databases for Linux.

GNU C Library version check

The installation program now verifies whether the required version of GNU C Library is installed. For more information, see Installing-the-application-server-on-Linux.

New operating system support

With this version, BMC Network Automation supports Ubuntu Linux version 16.04. For the complete operating system support information, see OS support.

New database support

Starting from version 8.9.02, BMC Network Automation supports PostgreSQL version 9.6.4. For the complete database support information, see Database support.

This version of BMC Network Automation is bundled with the following third-party software:

• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.8.0 update 131
• Apache Tomcat web server version 8.0.47

Enhanced Job Filter page

On the Job Filter page, in the Actions section, now you can select either all actions or select specific actions by which you want to filter jobs. Actions are also categorized further for easy selection, as follows:

• Standard Actions
• Custom Actions
• External Script Actions

Send the Device Inventory report as an attachment and include report URL

In addition to existing reports, you can send the Device Inventory report as an attachment to your email. For example, you can send a weekly notification that includes the Device Inventory report as an attachment. Also, now you can include a link to the Device Inventory report URL in the email. For more information, see Creating-a-notification-job.

Discontinued support for French

Starting from version 8.9.02, BMC Network Automation is not localized to French.

DeviceDTO updates

When adding a new device using SOAP API, DeviceService.addDevice() any current or trusted configurations in the DeviceDTO will no longer be used. Current and trusted configurations are solely managed by the system based on the snapshots of the devices, and so it was an error to allow the DeviceDTO to provide these configurations during the add operation.

REST API version 2.0 introduced

As in the previous version, version 2.0 supports create, retrieve, update, and delete operations on network spans and jobs.

Support is added for the following operations on various components:

• Create, retrieve, update, and delete operations on the predefined jobs, rule sets, and rules
• Prepare a new draft job from a predefined job
• Copy a completed job into a new draft job
• Attach a device inventory report in an email action in a job or predefined job

The value mapping and supporting component services are enhanced with new services to support the other oprtations (such as listing security vulnerabilities and Device Inventory report attributes).

See the complete API in Endpoints-in-the-REST-API-v2-0.

REST API version 1.0 deprecated

The previous version of the REST API is deprecated. It continues to function, but is not enhanced with any new features.

Enhanced firewall rules

In this version, ambiguities are fixed in the sorting logic for the non-overlapping firewall rules, which previously led to incorrect results or exceptions under certain conditions.

BMC Remedy AR System Server
(Includes BMC Remedy Mid Tier)

9.0

BMC Remedy ITSM Suite
(Includes BMC Change Management and BMC Service Desk: Incident Management)

9.0

BMC Atrium CMDB Enterprise Manager
(Includes BMC Atrium CMDB Web Services)

9.0

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform
(using BMC Atrium Single Sign-On 9.0.0)

7.8.00

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Content

20.16.03

BMC Decision Support - Network Automation

8.9.02

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management

4.6.04

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform

7.6.03

BMC Atrium Orchestrator Content

20.14.02

Alcatel-Lucent VitalQIP

7.3

Infoblox

6.8.13