What's New in CMS 10.33

REST APIs can also operate based on global-id

Version 10.33 extended the way REST APIs are available in UCMDB, now REST APIs can also operate based on global-ids. The request JSON of API methods now has a switch to determine whether the request contains UCMDB IDs or global IDs. If the request contains global IDs, they would be automatically converted to UCMDB IDs internally.

That is to say, as a UCMDB user, you can now query the UCMDB IDs or global IDs directly, and the response time is improved (faster) compared to the previous version.

Performance improvements on UCMDB server back-end with faster retrieval of Global IDs by Ucmdb ID and vice-versa

The implementation of a bidirectional GlobalID - UcmdbID mapping cache at the uppermost level enables faster retrieval of Global IDs by Ucmdb ID and vice-versa. Compared to version 10.32, performance evaluation for the mapping cache shows an improvement of performance between 15% - 78% (depending on scenarios) over the same operations without the cache.

Scenario	Performance Improvement
Conversion from Global_Id to Ucmdb_Id for a single CI	45% increase in performance
Conversion from Global_Id to Ucmdb_Id for a bulk of CIs (840)	78% increase in performance
Conversion from Ucmdb_Id to Global_Id for a bulk of CIs (840)	15% increase in performance

For more details, see Performance Improvement with a Bidirectional GlobalID - UcmdbID Mapping Cache in Universal CMDB Developer Reference Guide.

Extended Support Matrix Coverage

• Operating Systems:

  • Added support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.7, 6.8, and 6.9 for both UCMDB server and Data Flow Probe
  • Added support for Oracle Enterprise Linux with Red Hat Compatible Kernel v6.7, v6.8, and v6.9 for both UCMDB server and Data Flow Probe
  • Added support for Oracle Enterprise Linux with Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel v6.7, v6.8, and v6.9 for both UCMDB server and Data Flow Probe

• Database:

  • Added support for Microsoft SQL Server version 2016 SP1 (including high availability mode (AlwaysOn)) for UCMDB server and UCMDB Integration Service

• Virtualization:

  • Added support for Microsoft Azure for UCMDB server (with the standalone version of Microsoft SQL Server installed on Azure virtual machines)

• Plug-in

  • Added support for Microsoft Excel 2016

• Removed support for the following

  • Character set WE8ISO8859P1 for Oracle databases

• Web-based UCMDB UI: UCMDB Home

  UCMDB Home is the starting point when accessing the web-based UCMDB UI. You can access the UCMDB Home page from the UCMDB Browser 4.14 landing page. UCMDB Home allows you to customize the experience with the product by quickly adding to the landing page different types of widgets, such as reports or UCMDB Browser widgets. Also, you can navigate through the available web-based UCMDB modules and access them directly from the left navigation menu.

  For more details about UCMDB Home, see the Universal CMDB Home Guide.

  • Introduced new software teaching and recognition module Smart Software Analytics (SSA)

    This release introduced a new software teaching and recognition module Smart Software Analytics (SSA). SSA relies on data analytics to analyze large amount of scan files and suggest new software signatures, that can be used to recognize installed software. It automatically teaches unrecognized software by intelligently using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning technology. With SSA, users can have an enhanced software recognition ratio with less manual effort.

  • Added new module CI Search in UCMDB Home

    CI Search is the module for UCMDB Browser in UCMDB Home.

  • Made the following modules in Admin UI also accessible from UCMDB Home

    • LDAP Mapping
    • Package Manager

• Improvements to widgets

  • History widget. The History widget now has an improved comparison mode, making it easier for the user to view the changes that took place between two points in time, grouped by months and days. For more details, see History Widget in the Universal CMDB Browser User Guide.

  • Embedded widgets. Now you can visualize the CI Overview mode for the embedded History widget, Impact Simulation widget, and Get Related widget, by adding a new parameter in the URL. For more details, see "Load Embeddable Widgets in the Universal CMDB Browser Installation and Configuration Guide.

• Usability Improvements to Reports

  • As a user you can select an email template whenever you schedule a report.
  • As an administrator you can create email messages, save them as templates, and then other users can reuse them at any time when scheduling a report.

  For more details, see Reports in the Universal CMDB Browser Installation and Configuration Guide.

• Documentation

  • In-app interactive walk-throughs available

    The new in-app interactive walk-throughs help improve your experience with the product, by guiding you through some possible flows. The step-by-step instructions, together with the possibility to do it yourself, leads you to a simple and smooth experience, eliminating the confusion. Currently, the walk-throughs are available in the LDAP Manager module and UCMDB Home.

  • Universal CMDB Browser Sizing Guide

    The Universal CMDB Browser Sizing Guide aims to help you to right size the CMS infrastructure to support your UCMDB Browser strategy. The objective of the sizing is to estimate the system resource required to ensure that the deployed system meets the performance objectives. You can download the Universal CMDB Browser Sizing Guide from ITOM Marketplace.

Universal Discovery (UD) software provides visibility into IT environments by automatically discovering and mapping IT applications and infrastructure elements.

Data Flow Probe auto upgrade and manual upgrade

In version 10.33, the Data Flow Probe auto upgrade mechanism is fully available. That is, once UCMDB server is upgraded to version 10.33, the probe auto upgrade capability is in place. This capability enables you to upgrade all the connected probes of version 10.22 or later (with or without a CUP, union and non-FIPS mode) on Windows in your environments with just several clicks, without having to access the probe servers anymore.

Compared to the traditional manual probe deployment approach (uninstall old probe and then install the new probe), it takes 20~40 minutes to upgrade multiple probes in parallel with the probe auto upgrade mechanism.

For supported probes, it is also possible for you to upgrade them directly manually, without having to uninstall the existing probes first.

For more details, see Data Flow Probe Auto Upgrade in the Universal CMDB Data Flow Management Guide and "Data Flow Probes - Windows Upgrade" in the Universal CMDB Deployment Guide.

releases frequent Content Packs that extend the breadth and depth of discovery and integration content, and enhancements to existing content. Content Pack 24.00 delivers a wide range of content in the areas of support matrix, new discoveries, new and enhanced jobs, and integrations.

Discovered Operating Systems

Added support for discovery and inventory (including agent support) for the following operating systems:

• Linux Ubuntu Server/Desktop 17

Added support for scanner scheduler for the following operating systems:

• Apple OS X 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12 (macOS Sierra)

New and Extended Discovery

Added support for the following discoveries:

• Cisco Prime Infrastructure Discovery: Discover Cisco Prime Infrastructure by Web Services.
• Host Platform by Shell Discovery: Discover the platform information for a host using the Shell protocol, such as the platform vendor and cloud instance ID. Currently, it only supports Amazon EC2 instances.
• IBM Workload Partition (WPAR) Discovery: Discover IBM WPAR topology.

• New capabilities of the existing Amazon Web Services (AWS) Discovery:

  • Added the capability for discovering Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Machine Image (AMI), and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
  • Added the following new Discovered CITs to the AWS by Web Services job: Amazon EBS, Amazon Machine Image, and Amazon S3 Bucket.
  • Added a new attribute Cloud Instance ID to Node CIT. This attribute is the instance ID for active Amazon EC2 instances in the Amazon Web Services environment and is also used for reconciliation. This attribute value can be discovered by the AWS by Web Services, Host Platform by Shell, and Host Connection by Shell jobs.
• New capabilities of the existing SAP Solution Manager Discovery: Discover SAP Solution Manager version 7.2 or later.

• New capabilities of the existing SMI-S Discovery: Added support for Huawei OceanStorV3, Dorado V3, and OceanStor 9000 array families in the root/huawei namespace.

Updated Versions for Discovered Applications

Added support for discovering the following application versions to the existing discovery jobs:

• Cisco UCS 3.x
• Docker 1.1x.x
• Docker Community Edition (CE) 17.0x
• Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) 17.03
• F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) 12, 13
• HPE NonStop J06.x, K06.x, L06.x
• Libvirt 1.x, 2.x, 3.x

Integrations

• Added support for integrating the following application version to the existing integrations:

  • Micro Focus Network Automation (NA) 10.30

• Enhanced UCMDB-ServiceNow integration using the enhanced generic adapter as follows:

  • Enabled the creation of multiple requests from UCMDB’s side and the handling of the multiple asynchronous responses from ServiceNow’s REST API. The same is valid for the population jobs.

    Multi-threading support is added for global ID pushback and to fetch the sys_id from ServiceNow in Push jobs.

  • You can enable Web Services Security (WS-Security, WSS) for the push integration.
  • Improved the CI population performance.

  • The following data types are supported by the UCMDB-ServiceNow integration adapter: String, Boolean, Integer, Float (Double), and DateTime

  • Added a property connector.retry.statuses in the adapter.properties file. This property lists HTTP status codes that act like the triggers for the retry mechanism to be started.

    Custom error codes can be added to the adapter.properties file if you want to do so.

  For more details, see the ServiceNow Integration Using Enhanced Generic Adapter section in the Third Party Integrations section of the Content Help.

• Enhanced the UCMDB-NNMi integration as follows:

  • Added the Interface NNM Internal Key attribute on the Interface CI. This attribute is populated by the Pull Topology from NNMi job.

    This attribute indicates the Interface primary key in NNMi Database joining with NNMi server IP address. By default, this attribute is invisible.

  • Added the ODB_ID and UCMDB_ID custom attributes on the Interface CI in NNMi. These attributes contain the UCMDB ID of the corresponding interface in UCMDB.

Others

• Added a new job Oracle Topology by SQL - Service Name to connect Oracle using Oracle Service Name and discover Oracle topology by SQL.

• Added a new setting Oracle Database Discovery Method to the Database Software Configuration Discovery Activity > Discovery Preferences page > Run Oracle Discovery option. This setting has the following parameters:

  • SID. Connects to the Oracle Database with Oracle SID.
  • Service Name. Connects to the Oracle Database with Oracle Service Name.

  After connection, the Oracle topology is discovered using the Generic DB Protocol (SQL).

• Added a new option Impersonate currently logged in user (Windows) to the Scanner Configuration Generator wizard > Scanner Options page > Miscellaneous tab. This option defines whether to impersonate the currently logged in user. For details, see "Scanner Options Page" in the Universal CMDB Data Flow Management Guide.

• Added a new job parameter tryAllCredentials to the MSSQL Server Connection by SQL job. This parameter specifies whether to try more credentials if one DB instance is connected successfully with one credential.

  • If false, the job will store the first connected credential and stop trying other credentials.
  • If true, the job will try all credentials and store the last connected one.

• Added the following new job parameters to the Inventory Discovery by Scanner job.

  • discoverWPAR. Specifies whether to report IBM Workload partitions (WPARs).

    Note If this parameter is enabled and WPARs are discovered, UD Full (UDF) license is required instead of UD Inventory (UDI).

  • uploadScannerToAgentPath. Specifies whether to upload scanner to the installation path of UD agent.

    Note This parameter is only for Windows and eligible when Universal Discovery Protocol is used.

• Added the JVM CIT to 10 discovery jobs

• Enhanced 11 discoveries by adding a new attribute Platform Vendor to the Node CI type. This attribute indicates the host platform information.

• Scanner version: 10.33.000.252
• Universal Discovery Agent version: 10.33.000.252
• Inventory Discovery Knowledge version: 2017.07

For more information, see the Content Pack 24.00 documentation.