8.6.00 enhancements

This section contains information about enhancements in BMC Database Automation 8.6.00.

Compliance

Attempting to verify and maintain security and compliance is a never-ending drain on an organization's resources. BMC Database Automation 8.6.00 includes a compliance engine that improves an organization's ability to manage database compliance, reduce the risk and cost of compliance, and increasing governance. The compliance engine enables users to automate and standardize complex database activities that include provisioning, patching and administration using a platform for creating compliance standards.

Similar to Actions, standards are a framework for automating tasks and running scripts on hosts and databases. The framework consists of check and remediation content that manages compliance specific to an environment (for example, a DISA standard for an Oracle 11g database). This version of BMC Database Automation enables you to create and run standards, and perform checks and remediation to comply with those standards. Example content will be made available later in the 8.6.00 release. You can also run historical reports in BMC Decision Support - Database Automation 8.6 that provide detailed and summary information about the compliance operations that are performed in your environment by using BMC Database Automation.

For more information about compliance standards, see Managing-compliance-standards. For more information about compliance reporting in BMC Decision Support - Database Automation 8.6, see Compliance reports.

Database support

BMC Database Automation 8.6.00 adds the following support:

  • Oracle 12.1.0.2
  • Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 16.0
  • Oracle Linux 6 for Oracle 11gR2 and Oracle 12c

For more information about supported databases and OS in BMC Database Automation 8.6.00, see Databases-supported.

Performance improvements

This version of BMC Database Automation includes various performance improvements in the action, patch, and template repository, and in context tree loading times.

Template-based provisioning using command line utilities

Command line utilities now support using templates to perform provisioning operations on all the databases supported by BMC Database Automation in addition to the existing utilities. The bdacli tool uses command-based syntax that specifies what operations will be performed on the database (for example, applying a patch) by referencing a template for those operations. For more information about using this tool for template-based provisioning, see Performing-provisioning-operations-using-bdacli.

Search

This version of BMC Database Automation enables you to search all BMC Database Automation objects in the Context Tree based on name and type. This minimizes the amount of navigation and clicking through the tree required to find specific objects. For example, performing a Node search, and clicking on a host that displays from the search results, directs you to that node's position in the Context Frame, and displays its configuration page in the Workspace. You can search on standalone Managers or on individual Satellite Managers in a megamesh environment, but not across the mesh.

Search functionality correlates to the user permissions at login. For example, a user with sysadmin privileges might be able to search across the estate, but a user who only has access to a part of the estate will be limited to that area for the search.

For more information about the new search functionality, see Searching-for-objects-in-the-Context-Frame. This also corrects an identified issue (ID 16962).

This version of BMC Database Automation enables you to create a notification banner for the console. You can customize this banner to communicate specific messages to BMC Database Automation users. For more information, see Configuring-custom-settings. This also corrects an identified issue (ID 16904).

Customized title bar

This version of BMC Database Automation enables you to customize the title bar in the browser window. This helps you easily navigate between different managers by displaying a custom name in the browser tab title. This configuration is especially useful in a Multi-Manager environment where it is difficult to distinguish between Content and Satellite Managers when multiple manager server GUI interfaces are logged in other than by looking at the URL. For more information, see Configuring-custom-settings. This also corrects an identified issue (ID 16979).

Health and Value Dashboards

BMC Database Automation version 8.6.00 adds a Health and Value Dashboard that enables you to view and assess the health of the system, including the status of the BMC Database Automation Manager.

For more information about these new dashboards see Viewing-the-health-of-the-system.

Sorting in Excluded Candidates

This version enables you to sort by column name in the Excluded Candidates list page enabling you to better parse the information information on a screen if there are many targets in the list. When clicking Excluded Candidates on the Patch Install Candidates page, you can now click the column name to sort lines in alphabetical, and ascending and descending order. This also corrects an identified issue (ID 16951).

Enabling the discovery of Oracle Homes

Beginning with BMC Database Automation versions version 8.6, the settings required to enable the discovery and provisioning of Oracle Homes are enabled by default. This applies only for new installations of version 8.6. If you are upgrading to BMC Database Automation 8.6, you must first enable the discovery and provisioning of Oracle Homes before creating the Home.

 

 

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