Better data for application dependency mappings and JSON, picklist & markdown support for custom fields with v10.5.0

Many Device42 customers use the product’s application dependency capabilities for migration, integration, and consolidation projects. One feature many customers requested is the ability to measure the “chattiness” of the connections between services. In this release, we have added a number of stats to help with application dependency assessments including total # of connections detected, first discovered timestamp for the connection, and latest discovered timestamp for the connection.

In addition, we have added a whole bunch of stats around the contagiousness of the latest connections. This will be described in more details in a blog post to follow.

Based on popular demand, we have added support for JSON type, pre-defined pick list values and Markdown for custom fields. These new types are available via APIs as well. On the view page, json and markdown are rendered with a pretty-printed view (but show as raw on the edit pages).

Related field types in custom fields were previously storing name of the related field. We have converted this to use the D42 ID instead. This way if the name of the underlying object changes, you will see it as the same field but with a new name. And if the underlying object is deleted, you will now see an empty value.

Previously, custom fields only showed up after the object was added. With this release, custom fields will also show up while you are adding a new object (that has custom fields defined).

We have also added support for searching by custom field values on the category list page. Previously, custom field search was only supported in the global search.

In the global search, the custom field value search brings up the related objects directly (instead of showing custom fields as a separate bulleted list).

Switch ports now have custom fields support as well.

You can now download auto-discovery agents for OpenBSD and FreeBSD operating systems (from Tools > Auto-discovery > Agent Based Scans)

We have added a new option –light-mode for agent-based autodiscovery scans. Using this slows down the agent a bit, but limits the cpu consumption (mostly used when creating json object to be sent to D42).
Also, by default, the agent has an output now that you can send to your logging server to catch any issues. The output is in the following format and if any of those values is false, it means that it failed.

{
"data_collected":true,
"job_queued":true,
"d42_connection":true
}

We have added a new tab called “Mounts” on the device view and edit pages that displays the current mount points and available disk space (if available).

For SSL certificate auto-discovery, if the certificate is SNI based – we will now find the real certificate hostname.

We have added an option in the certificate auto-discovery to find all the parent certs in the chain. In the api call or excel import, you can set “follow_chain” to “yes” for the same behavior and when importing new certs using “dns” parameter.

The IPMI hostname might not be unique if not set properly. We have added the following changes to address this situation:

1. For Dell systems, we lookup the actual hostname if available via the SNMP and will use that to bring in that device.
2. If the hostname is not found or for other systems(like HP iLO), we will append the serial # to the IPMI hostname to make it unique.

Under Tools > Settings > Global settings, we have added an option to add networks you want to ignore via auto-discoveries or APIs. This way, if you have some link local addresses etc that you don’t want to bring into Device42, you can do so.

If you have complex/advanced routing needs for your Device42 appliance – you can now add(or delete) those to the system from the console menu.

When uploading a cert for your Device42 appliance, you can now choose the passphrase if the key is passphrase protected.

• DNS columns added to IP report. You can now choose A/AAAA records and PTR records as additional columns.

• Changing DNS record contents by passing content as existing content and new_content to the new value.
• Option to find parent certificates in certificates POST api call. follow_chain = yes

• Agent based scan was sending some values as empty strings if not discovered. It shouldn’t be sending such values. Now fixed.

If you are looking to migrate from legacy systems to next generation data center and need to know how your infrastructure and applications are connected with each other or are looking for a self-documenting CMDB, you can download a free trial of Device42 at: /download/

Current users can grab the update file from: /update/