25.2 (15.0) enhancements

25.2

Deep container discovery

BMC Helix Discovery provides detailed discovery of software running inside containers. A scan of a container in the data center has two parts: SSH access and API access. SSH access discovers running processes, whether they are containers, running in containers, or one of the levels of orchestration or runtime processes. If the process is identified as a container, and it is simply running on a host without orchestration software, its discovery continues by using SSH. Patterns determine the version of the software running in the container.

If orchestration software, such as Kubernetes, is discovered, you can perform further discovery by using a separate API scan, which can determine which deployments are present, the pods in which they run, and the original images. This provides accurate versioning of the software running in the containers, which in turn makes lifecycle data such as the end-of-support and end-of-life data available for container-based software. In this case, SSH and API scans are required for complete discovery.

Stable Software Instances are related to Deployment nodes, and are referred to as stable, as they do not change as containers come and go. The ephemeral software that runs inside containers is modeled by using Contained Software Instance nodes.

A Software-Container Details view provides an overlay view from which you can toggle the display of Contained Software and Container Images. See Software and infrastructure visualization for more information.

The following screenshot shows a visualization of discovered containers.

BGP network route discovery

BMC Helix Discovery discovers IP links between network devices by using BGP IP routing information, and discovers site-to-site connectivity using ISP AS path information. It supports iBGP and eBGP. For further information, see IP Connectivity using BGP data.

Discover hosts by using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure bastion

Discovering hosts in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) by using an OCI bastion enables you to perform detailed discovery of Linux hosts running in OCI without requiring further credentials. The OCI bastion also supports Windows hosts, though a PowerShell credential is required for the targets.

BMC Helix Discovery accesses the bastion with the OCI credential, and the bastion creates a managed SSH session to Linux hosts without requiring further credentials. For more information, see Discovering hosts in OCI by using OCI bastion.

Trigger run types

A ‘trigger’ discovery run allows you to create a discovery run that executes a pattern without performing any discovery. The pattern can be a simple pattern, or one written to access a defined data source type. For more information, see Creating import triggers and Performing a discovery run.

Visualizations allow you to view their state at earlier dates

  
BMC Helix Discovery allows you to view visualizations on selected dates in the past. For more information, see Software-and-infrastructure-visualization.

Results from the discovery of additional endpoints are shown on the requesting DiscoveryAccess

  
Where the scan of an endpoint runs additional Discovery requests, such as runCommand, on remote endpoints, the details of that request are added to an existing DiscoveryAccess for the remote endpoint and related to the first (requesting) DiscoveryAccess. The details are shown on the first requesting DiscoveryAccess page. For more information, see the  DiscoveryAccess page.

Support for ECDSA SSH keypairs and OpenSSH formatted keypairs for target scanning

BMC Helix Discovery supports ECDSA SSH keypairs for scanning discovery targets. ECDSA SSH keypairs and the other types of supported SSH keypair can be generated by using either OpenSSH or OpenSSL tools. 

Miscellaneous updates

• Support for the BMC Discovery Outpost using an HTTPS proxy.
• Add multiple related nodes to a Visual query builder tools quickly without repeatedly clicking Apply and Add.
• Apply a sort order to the results of a Visual Query. For more information, see Visual query builder tools.
• A new node kind, Certificate.

Review the BMC Helix Discovery 25.2 defect fixes that will benefit your organization and understand changes that might affect your users. 

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.