This documentation supports the 20.02 (12.0) version of BMC Discovery.To view an earlier version of the product, select the version from the Product version menu.

20.02 (12.0) enhancements

This section describes the new features and enhancements that are available in BMC Discovery version 20.02 (12.0).

BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) runs on CentOS 7. You can upgrade directly to BMC Discovery version 20.02 (12.0) 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 20.02 (12.0) 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.

Related topics

Installing-from-the-Kickstart-DVD

Installing-the-virtual-appliance

Release-notes-and-notices

Known-and-corrected-issues

Model-changes

Changes-to-Discovery-commandsBMC Discovery training and certification

BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) patch 2 available on CentOS 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 

The 20.02 (12.0) patch 2 release is available on CentOS 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (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. Any differences or notable points are covered in this section.

  • Clustering interoperability—you cannot have a cluster containing RHEL and CentOS based appliances.
  • You cannot upgrade a BMC Discovery 11.3 appliance running on CentOS 7 to a 20.02 (12.0) patch 2 appliance running on RHEL 7; rather, you must perform a new installation and then migrate your data. Migration involves backing up the CentOS 7 based appliance and restoring to a new BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) patch 2 appliance running on RHEL 7. 
  • Upgrading to BMC Discovery 11.3 appliance running on CentOS 7 to a 20.02 (12.0) patch 2 on CentOS 7 remains a normal patch upgrade.

Introducing the BMC Discovery Outpost

The BMC Discovery Outpost is a lightweight Windows service for discovery of all types of devices. The BMC Discovery Outpost connects securely to your appliances over HTTPS by using a single, web-friendly port (443). You can deploy a BMC Discovery Outpost to scan multiple isolated network regions, replace scanning appliances in a consolidating system, replace Windows proxies, or simply provide more flexibility to segment your network discovery.

enhancements_outpost.png

BMC Helix Discovery also uses the BMC Discovery Outpost. Starting with BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0), the BMC Discovery Outpost provides device capture, session logs (which are available from the appliance UI), and mainframe discovery. For BMC Helix Discovery users, this update is available from the first BMC Helix Discovery weekly update after the release of BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0).

The BMC Discovery Outpost is self-updating, so it provides a reduction in the cost of ownership, maintenance, and management.

Note

When upgrading from BMC Discovery 11.3.x to 20.02 (12.0), there is no need to change your deployment architecture. Rather, we strongly recommend that you upgrade using your existing architecture and test version 20.02 (12.0) in a known configuration. After you have tested BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) in a known configuration, you might choose to explore the deployment opportunities offered by the BMC Discovery Outpost.

Existing Windows proxies will continue to operate with upgraded appliances.

Introducing data sources

Use a data source to add static sources of information to your discovered information. Data stores might be a centralized asset database, a store accessed using a REST API, or a file system on a host against which you can run commands. You write patterns that specify the target data source and provide queries to extract the information required. You can use data sources to query an asset database to find the location of hosts as they are discovered.

A data source can be considered as a type of credential. A data source contains user name and password information, and is stored in the credential vault on the BMC Discovery appliance or BMC Discovery Outpost. A data source also contains endpoint information, though unlike credentials, this can be for a single endpoint only.

Data sources replace Integration Points used in previous releases. Existing static integration point configurations are converted on upgrade.

We have replaced the previous JDBC drivers page with a new Database Drivers page, that enables you to configure custom drivers without writing configuration files.

With the introduction of data sources, credential types are re-categorized. Existing searches using the REST API might no longer provide the same results as in previous versions. You can use the REST API listing to determine the credential categories for your credentials using GET /vault/credential_types.

Enhanced credentials UI

Add, locate, and manage your credentials easily by using the credentials UI. The selection of credential types to add is streamlined and you no longer need to remove unnecessary credentials types. The appliance UI displays shadow credentials, a label representing credentials held on BMC Discovery Outposts registered with the appliance. Use shadow credentials to manage credentials held in BMC Discovery Outposts. When you click a shadow credential, and you have permission to configure credentials, you are redirected to the UI of the BMC Discovery Outpost that holds the corresponding real credential, and logged into the BMC Discovery Outpost as the user with which you were logged into the BMC Discovery UI.

enhancements_credentials.png

New integrations with third-party credential managers

BMC Discovery supports integrations with the following credential managers:

  • Thycotic Secret Server
  • BeyondTrust Password Safe
  • Centrify Identity Platform
  • CyberArk. CyberArk has been supported since BMC Discovery 11.1. It can now be accessed over its REST API in addition to its CyberArk AIM Provider API.

Mandatory HTTPS connections to the appliance

In BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0), HTTPS is now mandatory. When you install BMC Discovery, HTTPS is enabled by default. When you upgrade  BMC Discovery, HTTPS is enabled whether or not it was previously enabled, and existing certificates are used. Self-signed certificates are created if the 11.3.x appliance was not using HTTPS. These self-signed certificates can be replaced by a certificate from a publicly trusted certificate signing authority, if required.

10–20% performance gain for scanning

Due to underlying code changes and architectural improvements, we have achieved a 10–20% performance gain for scanning. Some of these changes have been enabled by using Python 3. The improvements are described in the following sections. 

New Discovery queue

The internal architecture of BMC Discovery has been reworked, in line with the introduction of the BMC Discovery Outpost and work done for the BMC Helix Discovery product. Your interaction with the BMC Discovery results in the reasoning service placing work on the discovery queue. The discovery service on the appliance, and the BMC Discovery Outposts poll the discovery queue for work to undertake. The results of that work are returned to the discovery queue, from where reasoning retrieves them for processing. For UI users, this is entirely transparent.

The discovery queue is conceptually situated between reasoning, and the discovery service and BMC Discovery Outposts, but is actually a part of reasoning. If you examine the running services, you will see that there is no discovery queue service. 

We undertook this work so that exactly the same capable, low-maintenance BMC Discovery Outpost was available for users of the on-premises BMC Discovery and for the cloud-based BMC Helix Discovery, and we can develop both products from the same codebase. 

If you do examine the running services and processes, and are familiar with previous versions of BMC Discovery Outpost, you will see some differences, particularly with the introduction of Python 3 described below. 

Performance gain in scanning by using Python 3 

The BMC Discovery application is now developed by using Python 3.7. This is a recent, supported version of Python. Python 3.7 brings a performance gain in scanning. If you choose to look around the file system, you will see that commands now use python3 and, there are very few .pyc files. This is to be expected. You might however see some .zip files, these are compressed, compiled Python code and should not be touched.

New TPL function

BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) updates TPL to version 1.16.

TPL version 1.16 is available with BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0). It is a minor update to TPL version 1.15.

The following function has been added:

  • discovery-sqlQuery – performs an SQL query on a relational database, returning a list of SQLResultRow nodes.

Introducing Sync for ServiceNow CMDB

Use Sync for ServiceNow CMDB to populate a ServiceNow CMDB with data from BMC Discovery. Sync for ServiceNow CMDB is a separately licensed product. Setup and configuration is the same as the other targets, Remedy CMDB (REST API), Remedy CMDB (Legacy API), and Remedyforce. 

The CMDB sync mappings for Sync for ServiceNow CMDB are available to licensed customers, and can be downloaded from BMC EPD.

SNMP discovery improvements

SNMP discovery resolves the problems with duplicate Engine IDs in SNMPv3 discovery, enabling a more complete and consistent SNMP discovery.

Discover additional devices by using REST API

BMC Discovery version 11.3 introduced the ability to discover devices by using REST APIs but this was limited to discovering storage devices. In the 20.02 (12.0) release, you can additionally discover the following device types:

  • Host
  • Network Device
  • Printer
  • SNMP Managed Device
  • Management Controller

The ability to scan new devices using REST APIs is delivered through the monthly TKU release.

Note

Ensure that you have installed the latest TKU so that all the supported REST API devices are available. For more information about updated REST API devices, see the latest TKU documentation.

Other enhancements

The following other enhancements are included in BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0):

Model changes 

The following major changes have been made to the BMC Discovery model:

The following inferred nodes were added:

The following DDD nodes were added:

The model changes in BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0) are fully detailed in Model-changes.

Changes to BMC Discovery commands

For detailed information about discovery command changes between BMC Discovery versions, see Changes-to-Discovery-commands.

Report changes

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

Deprecated features

The following features are deprecated in BMC Discovery version 20.02 (12.0).

  • The BMC Discovery export framework is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. For new exports or integrations, you should use the REST API.
    • As part of the deprecation of the existing export framework, we have removed the JDBC driver page. Where you have configured exports, they will continue to function after upgrading to BMC Discovery 20.02 (12.0). However, you cannot update the drivers used in those exports or configure new exports. 
  • The attachments feature is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
  • The RSS channel feature is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.


 

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