The software on a BMC Discovery appliance, whether a downloaded virtual appliance or a kickstarted hardware appliance, consists of the operating system (OS) and the BMC Discovery application software. You can upgrade the OS using an OS upgrade (OSU) package. When the BMC Discovery application software is upgraded, it includes the latest OS upgrade at the time of its release.

When to upgrade?

Red Hat frequently releases bug fixes and security updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which CentOS and Oracle Linux subsequently incorporate. Each month, BMC creates OS upgrade packages that contain the subset of packages applicable to BMC Discovery. 

It is anticipated that most customers will not consider it necessary to upgrade the OS on their appliance every time BMC releases an OS upgrade package. However, each customer needs to determine their own patching and upgrade policy. To assist with this assessment, BMC will highlight any patches to serious defects or security vulnerabilities that affect BMC Discovery when announcing its availability to customers with a support contract.

OS upgrades are cumulative. That is, when you install the latest upgrade package, all packages are upgraded to the current version. You do not need to apply any previous upgrade before applying the latest.

The preferred method of upgrading the operating system, in stand-alone or clustered systems, is to use the upgrade UI. If you do choose to use the script described in upgrading the operating system, only the local machine is updated (not the cluster) and it is not rebooted automatically.

You can also upgrade the operating system using the command line utility tw_run_upgrade. The utility is only recommended if there is an upgrade issue and you are required to resolve it by using the options provided by the utility. If you choose to run the command line utility, only the local machine is updated (not the cluster) and not rebooted automatically. 

Latest operating system upgrade

Based on the RHEL versions that support BMC Discovery, the following OS upgrades are available:

  • Oracle Linux 9 OS upgrade: This version supports appliances with BMC Discovery 23.3 and later and contains the latest applicable Oracle Linux 9 packages.
    • The Oracle Linux 9 OS upgrade includes a benchmark against the RHEL 9 STIG, as there is now no Oracle Linux 9 STIG.
  • CentOS 7 OS upgrade: This version supports appliances with BMC Discovery 12.0 to 23.1 and contains the latest applicable CentOS 7 packages.
  • RHEL 7 OS upgrade: This version supports appliances with BMC Discovery 12.0 to 23.1 and contains the latest applicable RHEL 7 packages.

To learn about the content of the latest upgrades, packages that have been updated since the previous OS upgrade, and the latest OS upgrade file names, see the following documentation:

To learn about the content of the previous OS upgrades, from the Previous-operating-system-upgrades page, select the link for the corresponding period.

Final operating system upgrade for End of Version Support products

For operating systems that only apply to versions of BMC Discovery that are out of version support, we retain the following pages for reference:

CentOS packages included in RHEL OS upgrades

Equivalent CentOS packages are included in the RHEL OS upgrade. This ensures that when BMC Discovery systems that have had OS upgrades applied are upgraded to a release running on CentOS, parked packages are available to ensure that the upgrade does not revert the OSU level current at the time of the product release.

RHEL 7 in new installations of BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0)

New installations of BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) patch 2 and later are also available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 7). The RHEL 7 release is a separately licensed product intended for customers whose organizations require particular certifications available with RHEL 7, such as Common Criteria Security Certification. The release on RHEL 7 is functionally identical to those running on CentOS 7.

No upgrade path from BMC Discovery on CentOS 7 to RHEL 7

You cannot upgrade an appliance running on CentOS 7 to one running on RHEL 7; rather, you must perform a new installation and then migrate your data. See the Upgrading in the 11.3 and 20.02 (12.0) documentation for more information on upgrade/migration paths

The replacement of earlier OS versions with RHEL 7 ensures continued support for the appliance OS during its lifetime and supports newer hardware where you choose to install on hardware. It also provides SMB 2 support and the ability to run Apache 2.4.

When applying OS upgrades, make sure that you download and apply the correct RHEL operating system upgrade.

 

 

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