What's New in CMS Version 10.01

Enhanced High Availability and Load Balancing

A new solution for high availability and load balancing read operations enables balancing the load between UCMDB servers configured in the same cluster, and provides more efficient and automatic failover. The configuration includes having one server in the cluster for all operations involving writing to the database, and all the servers in the cluster performing read operations, including the server that writes to the database. If any server goes down, including the 'write' server, other servers in the cluster can take over.

Improved Search Engine

The UCMDB’s powerful search engine, previously introduced in version 10.00, is now enhanced with the following functionality, enabling improved search capabilities for the UCMDB Browser:

• Support of logical operators, such as and, or and not, allowing better flexibility in the search phrases (for example searching for CIs owned by person A or person B).
• Support for an exact string by using a double quotes (“”), per industry grade search engines. For example, searching for “New York” will yield a result of CIs containing the exact string “New York” and not the two separate strings of “New” and “York”.
• Support searching for CIs changed in a specific time period, for instance, searching for ”all nodes changed last week” or “all UNIX discovered yesterday”, and so on.
• Better handling of searching for numeric values. In UCMDB’s discovery process, some numeric values (for example, memory size, disk size, and so on) are stored as non-rounded values (for example, memory size of 2.999 GB). The search engine now supports rounding those values so that searching for a CI with a memory size of 3 GB yields CIs with a value that matches and is also close to 3, such as 2.999 GB.
• Support presenting synonyms of whole phrases in the search results. For example, an administrator may choose to provide users with the ability to search for a “Linux Machine” as a synonym for the whole phrase “UNIX version Linux”. This helps simplify the end user search experience and further decouples the search phrases from the internal UCMDB data model.
• Support of Composite CIs in the search environment for out-of-the-box content, as well as any newly added Composite CI rules. Users can now search for a Composite CI’s environment CI and the result will include the Composite CI’s root. For instance, searching for a CPU also yields the node of that CPU.

UCMDB Adapter Push Capability

Added push capability to the UCMDB adapters. UCMDB can now push to another UCMDB up to 6 million CIs/relationships per TQL.

Integration Studio Enhancements

• An adapter's resources are now available for editing from the integration point with the ability to view only those resources relevant to a specific adapter. Query resources for a specific job can also be viewed or edited from the jobs panel.
• Groovy files are now easy to edit with proper syntax highlighting.
• Added the ability to suppress a specific warning or error push status from within the user interface.
• An indication of the overall job execution status appears for each integration in the integration list. The indicated status reflects the accumulated status of the executed jobs.

Usability Improvements

• You can customize the title that appears on the UCMDB home page and the login page. This can help to easily distinguish between production and non-production environments.

• You can now modify the start time definition for the history baseline process in the override.properties file even after the server has been started. It is no longer necessary to set the definition prior to the first startup of the server or prior to running an upgrade. This enables more flexibility when configuring when data is stored into history.
• You can now update and install a content pack directly from the UCMDB UI starting from Content Pack 12 and higher.
• You can access the UCMDB Browser directly from the UCMDB UI, by right-clicking a CI and selecting Open UCMDB Browser.This provides additional information available from the UCMDB Browser widgets.

• The CI Type hierarchy is available now in a simplified HTML format that can be accessed directly from the UCMDB UI.

Improved View Results Definition

• In the Modeling Studio’s View Definition pane, you can now select certain view nodes so their results do not appear in the view results. The Set View Node Invisible/Visible options ensure that CIs matching a view node that is set as invisible are excluded from view results. If a function is defined in the Report Layout pane, it takes invisible view nodes into account.

More Efficient Permissions Configuration

You can assign entire folders to a resource group. For roles containing that resource group, the specified permissions apply to all relevant resources in the folders of the resource group.

UCMDB/Configuration Manager Unified Content Packaging

UCMDB’s Package Manager now includes the ability to import/export Configuration Manager policies and managed views.

Software Builds Support

CM can now analyze configuration segmentation across multiple servers based on the software and software versions installed on these servers. In addition, software installed on a server can now be used as part of a server baseline. This enables baseline policies to validate that certain software, or even a specific software version, is installed on the servers. This feature is enabled by configuring specific lists of Installed-Software that are folded under the Node CI type as part of the Node composite CI.

Wizard Enhancements

• Data Quality Policy Wizard. The Data Quality Policy wizard helps to ensure the integrity of the data in UCMDB by easing the creation of a single policy that combines the elements of both a baseline policy and a topology policy. This type of policy helps to ensure that no required data is missing in UCMDB.
• Goldmaster Policy Wizard. When defining a baseline policy, you can specify a specific CI as the gold master for all the CIs of the same type in the selected view, instead of specifying an entire model as the baseline.
• Scheduled Reports Wizard. The option to add additional recipients was added to the Scheduled Reports wizard.

Policy Content - Waste Detection for Windows Servers

Out-of-the-box Unutilized Resources policies help to ensure that no redundant processors or memory are installed on Windows 7, 2003, or 2008 machines. These policies are available when you purchase an Advanced Configuration Manager LTU.

Support for Single Configuration Manager Instance on Top of Multi-Tenant UCMDB

Configuration Manager can now be used with a Multi-Tenant UCMDB. While Configuration Manager itself does not support multi-tenancy (it is not tenant aware), it can connect to a multi-tenant UCMDB environment. In a multi-tenant UCMDB environment, Configuration Manager can function as a UCMDB administration tool where administrators—who have permission to see all tenant-related CIs—can define configuration policies and/or track changes, enabling end-users with permissions associated with a specific tenant to view the resources to which that tenant is assigned, through the UCMDB Browser.

Migration and Upgrade

• The Universal Discovery agent can now operate with the DDMI server. This means that customers who have both DDMA and DDMI can migrate DDMA to Universal Discovery first, start making use of new features such as agent-based discovery, and continue running DDMI and collecting inventory data via the Universal Discovery agent. DDMI migration can then be done at a later time.
• DDM inventory server configuration can now be migrated into UD to recreate a similar configuration. This includes mapping of device groups to management zones, migration of user credentials, including agent certificates and keys, as well as other discovery and inventory-related configurations, including scanner configuration.
• The DDM Inventory agents can now be automatically upgraded to Universal Discovery agents. It is not necessary for customers to fully redeploy the agent. UD can perform the upgrade using the DDMI agent itself, simply replacing it with the UD agent automatically.

Ranking of Management Zones

Management Zones can now be ranked to better handle overlaps in IP ranges between different management zones. When an overlap exists, the overlapping IP addresses are regarded as part of the Management Zone(s) with the highest rank only, and are not considered as part of other Management Zones with the lower ranks.

Agent Enhancements

• It is now possible to run the UD agents under a non-root account on UNIX systems, if necessary. It is still recommended, however, for the agents on UNIX to be installed to run under the root account.
• When the UD agent is deployed to run under a non-root account, the Universal Discovery protocol has been enhanced to be able to run commands with root privileges via the sudo command.
• The native agent package for Ubuntu Linux is now available. Universal Discovery 10.00 included an RPM package for Linux, but Ubuntu Linux does not use the RPM package manager, and instead relies on the Debian package manager (.deb packages).
• The performance of the Universal Discovery protocol when working with the Windows agent has been improved considerably, resulting in faster job run time for the jobs using this protocol.

Scanner-based Inventory Discovery Improvements

• Store and Forward Server/Scanner Scheduler. These components allow for more flexible inventory collection capabilities when running the scanners in the Manual Deployment mode. The Store and Forward server is designed to facilitate the transfer of scan files through multiple firewalls until they reach the Data Flow Probe. The Scanner Scheduler implements scheduling capabilities in cases where the probe is not able to connect to the device directly and scanner scheduling happens locally on the managed machine, rather than being driven from the probe.
• Reprocessing Scan Files. When additional content is taught to the application library (SAI), the scan files can be reprocessed, enabling the software inventory information to be re-recognized and added more efficiently. Processing time depends on how busy the probe is and the quantity of scan files the XML Enricher has in its incoming directory.
• Pre-scan and Post-scan Scripting. The support for pre-scan and post-scan scripting has been added to enable configuring the scanners to collect customized information.

• Custom Mapping of Asset and Hardware Data. Added a user-friendly UI to map asset and hardware attributes from the scan file to UCMDB without editing the Jython script.

Ability to Run Two XML Enricher Instances

To increase the scalability of the Data Flow Probe, two XML Enricher instances can now be run at the same time, increasing the ability to handle large amounts of data coming into the XML Enricher incoming folder.

In-focus Software Utilization

In-focus software utilization is now mapped to UCMDB CIs and relationships. This data is now available not only in the scan files, but also in UCMDB.

Updated Keystore and Truststore Certificates in Probe and UCMDB Server Side

Certificates that are used for communication between UCMDB and the Data Flow Probe now use SHA-256 signature together with a longer 2048-bit RSA key. If these certificates existed in a previous installation, they must be regenerated to obtain this higher level of security.

Client Discovery Enhancement

The UD unique ID is now checked upon connection to the device in the inventory workflow. Depending on the outcome, UD runs, reruns, or exits the scanning workflow.

Content Release Improvements

When content is released as Updates between Content Pack releases, SAIs are checked against the base version and only new content is supplied to reduce download times and save disk space.

Ordering Population Queries

Users can now determine the order of TQLs during job synchronization.

New Jython Interpreter Version

The Universal Discovery Jython interpreter has been updated to version 2.5.3. This update may require some changes to be made to custom-developed Jython scripts from previous versions. For more information on migrating custom Jython scripts, refer to the Universal CMDB Developer Reference Guide.

New hpCmd Component

The new hpCmd component replaces xCmd.exe executable. This new component introduces better scalability and NTCMD protocol performance, as it is used as a DLL on the data flow probe side rather than as an executable. For details on hpCmd, refer to the Discovery and Integration Content Guide.

UD Content Pack 12 comes bundled with UCMDB 10.01 and includes the following new content:

New Discovery Content

• KVM Adapter. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel. This adapter discovers the relationship between the physical server and the virtual machines. Additionally, it discovers the CPU, memory, and other configuration parameters for the virtual machine.
• SMI-S Based Storage Topology Adapter. Storage Management Initiative-Specification is a storage standard developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and delivers management profiles for storage systems. This adapter interrogates the CIM model using an SMI-S client to discover storage entities such as storage arrays, fiber channel topologies, and connection to the client nodes.

• SAP BusinessObjects Discovery. BusinessObjects XI provides components for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. UD now offers support for identification and presence of various BusinessObjects components,such as:

  • BusinessObjects Enterprise XI
  • BusinessObjects Data Services XI
  • BusinessObjects Crystal Reports XI
  • BusinessObjects Explorer
• VMware Infrastructure - Distributed Virtual Switches.VMware discovery package retrieves virtualization infrastructure of VMware over Web Services and reports its topology. This includes ESX servers, virtual machines, clusters, storage and networking. VMware discovery can now report Distributed Virtual Switches.
• DNS Server Discovery Enhancement. This enhancement discovers the list of DNS servers configured on servers as attributes on the node class.
• NetFlow v9. NetFlow protocol-enabled routers and switches gather network statistics information for further export to NetFlow collectors. The Collect Network Data by NetFlow job now supports NetFlow v9 packets.
• Management Zone Virtualization Discovery Activities. Out-of-the-box activities have been created for virtualization discoveries so that they can leverage management zone discovery capabilities. This allows easy wizard-based configuration of virtualization discovery jobs.
• Java EE Infrastructure.. JEE discovery package contains content for discovery of different JEE platforms and their components, including JEE applications, JDBC, and JMS resources. Among supported platforms are WebSphere, JBoss, Weblogic, and Glassfish. This content pack adds support for WebSphere 8 discovery and brings enhanced support for customized JBoss deployments.
• MS Cluster IPv6 Enhancement. MS Cluster discovery can now report IPv6 resources.

UCMDB Discovery and Integration Content Guide

• PDFs and Online Help Center. This guide is now available in five different pdf guides, as well as one online help center. The pdf guides are: Supported Content, Integrations, Discovery Activities, Discovery Modules, and General Reference.
• Application Signatures. The Discovery Modules section now includes a detailed explanation of Application Signatures, how it works and how it could be further extended by end users.

Deployment Guide

The interactive Deployment Guide has been improved with better workflows.

Videos

Videos demonstrating the new features for version 10.01 are available on the installation media, as well as on the HP Live Network.

Cross-Product Workflow Presentations

There are now several cross-product workflows which present examples of how to use the Configuration Management System together with other HP applications to gain quick value. These presentations for version 10.00 and 10.01 are available directly from the online help and from the HP Software Support site.