v15.14.02: The Job Status Dashboard is here, now with IBM z/OS Mainframe Discovery

With the introduction of the new Jobs Status Dashboard in v15.14.02, you have much more visibility into what your jobs are doing and how they are performing, and you will now enjoy more information about jobs processing and their status. The new job engine is designed to give you visibility and stability within your auto discovery tasks, and in some circumstances, this can increase the load on your system and can cause contention.

We therefore ask that as you upgrade, you take the time to double check your appliance configuration.

If you are experiencing any performance issues with the new release, please open a ticket with https://support.device42.com and we will work with you to tune your Device42 appliance(s) to ensure its resources are right-sized for your infrastructure.

We are excited to announce the general availability of Device42 v15.14.02 with the following changes. Users upgrading to v15.14.02, be sure to check out the “Upgrade Pre-Requisites” section at the bottom!

Job status dashboard

This release marks the first production availability of the Job Status Dashboard, which until now was only available in beta.

The Jobs Status Dashboard offers an easy, centralized place to monitor the progress of all your running discovery jobs, and its sub-pages make it your one-stop-shop for information on completed jobs, for monitoring various Device42 queues, and more! See the v15.14.01 beta blog post for even more details!

z/OS discovery

v15.14.02 adds the ability to agent-lessly discover IBM z/OS-based mainframes. A wealth of information can be discovered from z/OS, ranging from IP address details to running services and their respective communication ports. For more technical information, check out the IBM z/OS discovery documentation.

Create a new z/OS mainframe discovery job from the main menu, “Discovery > HyperVisors / *nix / Windows”:

Of course, IBM mainframe discovery jobs can also be scheduled. To schedule one, go to the main menu, “Discovery > HyperVisors / *nix / Windows” and select the IBM z/OS platform.

Licensing for IBM mainframe & mid-range discovery

A license is now required to run IBM i/AS400 or IBM z/OS discoveries.

SSL certificate auto-clean

Newly added is SSL certificate auto-clean. SSL auto-clean allows you to create rules against individual SSL certificates themselves, which will delete SSL certificates that haven’t been found in the amount of days you configure (as long as it doesn’t contain device certificates). Auto-clean rules can be created via the main menu, Tools → Auto Clean Rules:

Support for additional SSH cipher algorithms

This release adds support for older cipher algorithms still in use to better support certain older versions of the *nix operating system.

Asset list page filter changes

We have added the customer filter to the Asset list page to help you find the assets you are looking for.

Enhanced VMware discovery results

VMware discovery has been enhanced to now also import the CPU along with any other parts that are reported by the VMware API:

DNS support added to ping connectivity test

We now support entering a FQDN in the ping test found in the Device42 Appliance Manager, which can now perform a DNS lookup:

Generate an SNMPwalk from your remote collector

We now support generation of an SNMP walk through a remote collector. Note that RC-based SNMP walks are performed via your D42 Appliance Manager:

API Changes

Added notes support to bulk_fields across all custom field API endpoints. Notes can now be updated using the notation customFieldKey:CustomFieldValue:NotesText
Added clear_customer and clear_service_level attributes to the /api/1.0/auto_discovery/networks/ endpoint
Added new endpoint /api/1.0/vrfgroup/ for viewing and managing VRF groups. Uses the standard API structures found across all other API endpoints.

SNMP discovery support

This release adds SNMP discovery support for the following devices:

Toshiba UPS running RemoteEye4 SNMP agent gateway
Liebert MPX PDUs (Giest)
SPARC T7-1
Energenie PDUs
Powertek PDUs

Known issues:

- Tasks logged into /var/log/rc will be archived into a single file.
- AS/400 & z/OS discovery aren’t yet supported by discovery scores.
- Only Superusers can view all items in the “Reporting” menu. Users without super permissions will currently see a reduced option set:

Bug fixes

- - Device42 Audit log contained extraneous formatting characters.
  - OpenStack discovery might fail if targeting the public URL and selecting the ‘Discover All Projects’ option.
  - With MT enabled, users were unable to view or modify group assignments for customers.
  - Related type custom field value was reset to 0 rather than unset when the entry was cleared via the UI.
  - Health stats was returning stale information for disconnected remove collectors.
  - Port connection was missing between switches if remote ports were created prior to discovery of the actual switch.
  - Prohibited Software Alert was not sending alerts out when prohibited software was detected.
  - Scheduled legacy reports were being sent by standby server.

Upgrade Pre-Requisites:

- - Users upgrading to v15.14.02 MUST upgrade their WDS (Windows Discovery Service) instance to the newest release. Download via the Autodiscovery software page.
  - As part of this upgrade, users running ADM Sampling (aka ‘service port’ jobs) must re-run the relevant discovery jobs manually (or schedule those jobs to run) after the upgrade; ADM collection will not resume after upgrade until the relevant discovery jobs run again.