Site version: 62 - March 2016
The Server Automation team is pleased to announce that SA Application Update 4.5 is now available.
As well as supporting the latest Bigfix platform release 9.5 this release also includes;
Major new features and enhancements
The following 3 features will help customers optimize their patching maintenance windows:
Accelerate Automation Plan Execution by excluding “non-reporting endpoints”
· You can configure the system to exclude non-reporting endpoints from the plan targets list, allowing your plans to run more efficiently. Computers are considered non-reporting if they have not reported to the BigFix server as seen in the Computers view in the All Content domain. To configure Server Automation to exclude non-reporting endpoints, you specify a non-reporting threshold at a global level when you configure the Automation Plan Engine. For each automation plan, you can configure whether endpoints that have exceeded the non-reporting threshold are excluded from the target list for each plan step.
Ensure that your applications are back up and running during critical business hours by specifying and Automation Plan “stop time”
· You can set a plan stop time to control when your Automation Plans stop. This enables you to set a specific time window during which your Automation Plans run. For information about the expected behavior, Please refer to the documentation link below.
Schedule pre-fetch downloads during Off-Peak hours to minimize network bandwidth impacts and accelerate execution time during maintenance windows
· From the Take Automation Plan Action screen, you can schedule a time and date on which to pre-fetch downloads.
More granular control over baseline step execution
· You can now control whether or not the remaining components of a baseline are executed when one component in that baseline fails. Two new global settings, one controlling the behavior for standard steps and one controlling the behavior for failure steps, can be configured to allow the remaining members of a baseline to be executed or not, when a member of that baseline fails.
Ease of Use Enhancements:
Automation Plan Engine configuration
· You can now easily configure the Automation Plan Engine using a Task. This has expanded the configuration functionality available and simplifies the configuration of the Automation Plan engine.
User interface improvements
· The Take Automation Plan Action user interface has been streamlined and improved.
Sample plans
· A number of new sample plans have been added to help you get up and running quickly with new content
Other Enhancements:
Save Admin time and effort by automating the patching of your VMware templates
· Now you can automatically patch VMware templates on Windows and Linux. To patch the templates you use a sample automation plan. Please Read the documentation carefully before using the plan as the targeting requirements for this sample plan are different than other sample plans.
Memory optimization and improvements
· Memory usage by the Automation Plan Engine has been further optimized when processing Automation Plans that use the “Dynamically Run Baselines from a Site” fixlet.
Quality Improvements and enhancements
· A number of defects have been fixed and quality enhancements have been included in this release.
For more information please consult our updated documentation here