24.3 (14.1) enhancements

If you are new to BMC Discovery, we recommend that you see Getting-started as an introduction to using the product.

Review the BMC Discovery 24.3 (14.1) enhancements for features that will benefit your organization and to understand changes that might impact your users. 

24.3.00 (14.1)

Synchronization and consolidation of inferred data

The inferred model is the model that BMC Discovery creates from directly discovered data (DDD). Where just the inferred model is consolidated—synchronized from one system to another—no DDD from discovered targets is transferred to the receiver. This is important; your company security policies might prohibit sensitive data like DDD from being stored or processed off-site, or you may be preparing to migrate to BMC Helix Discovery. Also, BMC Discovery generates large volumes of DDD, and consolidation of just the inferred data removes the need to transfer it.

Consolidation of the inferred model is used primarily to synchronize data from existing on-premises BMC Discovery appliances into the BMC Helix ecosystem, where other products, such as BMC Helix AIOPs, can use BMC Discovery's rich data.

With the inferred data sent to the receiver, you can perform tasks as if the data were discovered on the receiver, including:

• Using service and application models created on the sender.
• Creating new service and application models.
• Reporting on a consolidated view of services and infrastructure.

The following diagram shows how a DDD consolidation receiver sends inferred data:

For more information, see Consolidation.

Support for vCenter SSO authentication for VMware guest scanning

You can enable vCenter SSO authentication for VMware guest scanning. This functionality removes the need for individual sets of VMware guest credentials for deep guest OS discovery. BMC Discovery instead leverages VMware’s vCenter ability to use API credentials as part of the existing vCenter discovery to single sign-on into the guests. This capability eliminates the administrative overhead of maintaining guest credentials and improves the efficiency and security of the discovery process. To enable this feature, you must select the vCenter SSO check box when creating a vCenter credential in BMC Discovery. After vCenter SSO is configured on the VMware side, BMC Discovery obtains an SSO token from vCenter for VM guest scanning. 

The following screenshot shows the vCenter SSO enablement option for the VMware vCenter credential:

For more information, see Adding-credentials.

Automatic scanning of cloud-based Kubernetes clusters

Automatic discovery of cloud-based Kubernetes clusters occurs by default when you scan your supported cloud services. When BMC Discovery finds a Kubernetes cluster, it creates an automatic scan by using a Kubernetes token obtained from the cloud provider. Automatic scanning of Kubernetes clusters can be disabled (Automatically scan Kubernetes clusters) for each scan. No additional credentials are required. The API token is generated depending on your existing privileges.

For more information, see Discovering-Kubernetes-clusters andKubernetes (BMC Discovery Content Reference).

Select the credentials to export from the credential vault

Select and export any combination of credentials from the credentials page and export single credentials or the entire credentials vault. For more information, see Exporting-and-importing-the-credential-vault.

Management endpoints in the REST API for common setup tasks

Automate common setup tasks by using the management endpoints in the REST API. You can automate the following tasks:

• Appliance and OS upgrade.
• Cluster management.
• Outpost and Windows Proxy registration.
• User/Group management.
• Configure LDAP, SMTP, baseline and more.

Miscellaneous improvements

The following miscellaneous improvements are available:

• An administrative user can delete queries saved by other users; see Saving-and-sharing-queries.
• The Visual Query Builder supports queries with parameters specified when you run the query.
• The Visual Query Builder supports copying selected columns when you create a query.
• Many network devices only listen on UDP ports. These devices do not respond to prescans, so they might not be detected and consequently not added to the full scan. Select the Prescan IPs option, where you scan specific ranges you know contain many such network devices. The scan will give NoResponse DAs for dark space but successfully detect everything else; see Performing-a-discovery-run.
• TPL template files are provided for sync mapping extensions for Azure services.

The 24.3 version also includes the Technology Knowledge Update TKU 2024-Sep-1.

What else changed in this release

Change of supported OS for BMC Discovery Outpost

The minimum supported version of the OS for the BMC Discovery Outpost is Windows Server 2016. Before upgrading your BMC Discovery Outposts you must upgrade any BMC Discovery Outpost hosts to Windows Server 2016 and later.