Product:
IBM BigFix Inventory application update 9.2.15.
Features:
This update contains features that extend software discovery, enhance license reporting and address security scenarios. The key features include:
- Preview feature*: New Software Summary (Preview) report
The new Software Summary (Preview) report provides an overview of software inventory in your environment. Each row represents a set of software components in a given version that are related to the specified product grouped by the selected columns. Additionally, the report shows the usage statistics for your products. You can check how many instances of a product within the group are used and how many are not. You can see an overview of software usage statistics from last month, last quarter, and last year. You can also track the number of software instances within the group for which software usage is monitored and for which it is not.
Note: The usage statistics that are displayed on the report are planned to be enhanced in the future.
Benefits: Thanks to the new report, you get a single point of reference for the high-level overview of your software inventory. The report is easy to read and customize. All usage statistics being available in one place, you can quickly compare the total number of software instance that are installed in your environment with the number of instances that are actually in use. Thus, you can plan how to manage your software needs and costs.
*The Preview features give you a chance to take a sneak peek at what we are currently developing. You can try them out and provide your feedback to influence how they work when they are officially released. You can provide your feedback about the dashboard by clicking the Send Feedback button.
- Extended support
Support for new platforms
• Windows 2019
• Oracle SPARC-M8 processor
• Ubuntu 18.04 on x86
Support for new virtualization technologies
• vCenter with external Platform Services Controllers (PSC) on different computers
• Support for Solaris Kernel zones on Oracle Solaris x86 and SPARC with nested virtualization
- Extended reporting of usage statistics for Java
BigFix Inventory introduces a new method of reporting usage for Java Virtual Machine and Runtime Environments. Paths to Java processes that run on a computer are matched with paths in which the software is discovered.
Benefits: Thanks to the new method of reporting BigFix Inventory can determine exactly which Java instance is used. It allows you to distinguish between usage of IBM and Oracle Java installed on a single computer.
- Enhanced Software Installations report
The Software Installation report is improved to provide consistent data that is in line with other available reports.
Benefits: Thanks to the new data model, the report criteria are extended to cover additional component instances.
- Extension of the To Do list for maintaining currency of your scanning actions
The To Do list is extended and additionally displays information about the outdated scanning actions that need to be restarted.
Benefits: Thanks to the newly available information, you can monitor the scanning actions from the Web interface and make sure that scanned data for the related reports is accurate.
- Names of fixlets in the BigFix console contain information about version
Starting from now, names of all BigFix Inventory fixlets include their version.
Benefits: Thanks to the clear versioning, you can easily check if your running actions are up-to-date. If not, you can decide to restart the actions to make sure that you take advantage of all the newest improvements.
- Discovery of new components from, among others, Citrix, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle
The software catalog is extended to discover new components from Citrix, Symantec, and Oracle. To discover the components, ensure that you upgrade BigFix Inventory to version 9.2.15.
Below is the list some of the newly added components. To get a full overview of additions and learn about their exact versions, use the Software Catalog widget in BigFix Inventory to browse the catalog content.
- Extended discovery of Oracle Databases certified for Oracle Database 18c: 18.3
• Added discovery capability for Citrix products
o Citrix XenApp
o Citrix XenApp Reports
o Citrix XenDesktop
• Added discovery capability for Hewlett-Packard products
o HP Business Process Monitor
o HP Business Service Management
o HP Operations Agent
o HP Operations Manager
• Added discovery capability for Oracle products
o Oracle Clusterware
o Oracle Linux
o Oracle SOA Suite
Benefits: More visibility into deployed products and components and better license management without the need to develop custom signatures.
-
Security enhancements
Rails is upgraded to version 5.0.7 to maintain security.
Actions to take
To learn how to get the application update and deploy it as well as to view the full list of new features and APARs that were fixed in this application update, see: https://ibm.biz/bfi_update_9215.