CMC Updates - December 2021

The following updates have been made in this release:

• CMC now supports hybrid cloud systems.
  
  In this release, the CMC Inventory and Patch Planning apps are extended to support monitoring of off-premises logical partitions (LPARs) on Power systems located in IBM data centers.  The CMC Inventory and Patch Planning apps can now monitor the health status of your off-premises LPARs in the IBM cloud. You can search your resource and hardware inventory to find what you need and select any resource to filter the status information for that resource.
  
  CMC collects off-premises data via your choice of two mechanisms.
  Note: If both mechanisms are activated, Data Collector takes precedence.
  
  
  • The new IBM CMC Data Collector Java application. The Data Collector application runs on a RHEL or SLES partition on a Power IBM cloud system and uses the SSH authorized_keys mechanism to connect to your AIX, IBM i, RHEL, and SLES endpoints and gather data. In this way, one Data Collector instance can collect data from multiple endpoints for analysis and display in the CMC Inventory and Patch Planning apps. 

The Inventory app displays the following off-premises partition information on the Partitions and Virtual I/O Servers tab:

• • • • • • • • • • • Name
                    • Location
                    • Partition type
                    • OS version
                    • Serial / IP address / virtual serial
                    • Data Collector

The Patch Planning app displays the following off-premises partition information:

• • • • • • • • • • • Name
                    • OS type
                    • Current level
                    • Product ID, which is comprised of the machine type (for example, 9009-22A), the description (for example, Power S922), and the managed systems.
                    • Serial
                    • IP address

• • IBM® Power Systems™ Virtual Server (PowerVS) APIs. CMC obtains the list of endpoints and inventory data by calling the PowerVS API.

The Inventory app displays the following off-premises partition information on the Partitions and Virtual I/O Servers tab.  (The Patch Planning app is not supported with PowerVS API mechanisms.)

• • • • • • • • • • • Name
                    • Location
                    • Partition type
                    • OS version
                    • Serial/ IP address / virtual serial
                    • PowerVS Service

• System subscription expiration notification
  
  CMC notifies you in advance when a CMC subscription is going to expire:
  • Notification is sent via email at intervals of 30 days, 14 days, 7 days, and 1 day prior to expiration, and on the expiration day if the subscription has not been renewed.
  • Notification is prominently displayed in the GUI beginning 14 days prior to the subscription expiration.
  • After the subscription has expired, CMC sends email notifications daily if you have not renewed the subscription. Remove the system from CMC in the event that you do not plan to renew the subscription and want to stop the email notifications.

• EP 2.0 now supports tags. You can group systems and partitions in EP 2.0 by assigning them to new or existing tags. You can select the systems and partitions that you want to assign to a tag and click Add a Tag.  You have the choice to apply an existing tag to the resources or to create a new tag.  To manage tags or view all resources that are assigned to a tag, use the Manage Tags control.