New Features and Enhancements

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IBM® Connect:Direct® for Microsoft Windows version 6.4 and its related software have the following new features and enhancements added in this release of IBM Serling Connect:Direct for Microsoft Windows.

FixPack 1 (v6.4.0.1)

New Features or Enhancements
To install this software, you should go to the Fix Central and follow instructions described to complete the download.

The following issues are resolved in IBM Sterling Connect:Direct for Microsoft Windows:
  • Keystore Passwords with Special Characters:
    • Upgrades from IBM Sterling Connect:Direct for Microsoft Windows versions prior to 6.3.0.3 may fail if Secure+ keystore passwords contain special characters. You may encounter errors such as "Convert KeyStore failed…" and "PCG760E rc=8 PKCS12 KeyStore open exception - toDerInputStream rejects tag type 55."
  • Keystore Passwords with 64 or More Characters:
    • Upgrades from IBM Sterling Connect:Direct for Microsoft versions Windows prior to 6.3.0.3 may fail if Secure+ keystore passwords contain 64 or more characters. You may encounter errors such as "gsk_environment_init() failed GSK_ERROR_ASN - Error validating ASN fields in encoding".
    • Fresh Secure+ keystore creation with passwords containing 64 or more characters in IBM Sterling Connect:Direct for Microsoft Windows versions 6.3.0.3 and above may fail with the error "gsk_environment_init() failed GSK_ERROR_CRYPTO - Error processing cryptography."
Attention:
Announcement about High Speed Add on (HSAO)

Version 2.0.0 of High Speed Add On (HSAO) is now available. Version 1.0.0 will be gradually phased out. The new version is based on IBM Aspera Faspio Gateway, to which HSAO parts give the owner entitlement.

It is supported by Connect:Direct UNIX (Linux x86/x64 and AIX), Connect:Direct Windows and Connect:Direct z/OS. To support business-to-business HSAO transfers, IBM Sterling Secure Proxy may be located between Connect:Direct and Faspio Gateway. Getting started with Connect:Direct, Secure Proxy and faspio Gateway is described in Connect:Direct’s and Secure Proxy’s documentation.

Note that v1.0.0 and v2.0.0 of the HSAO protocols are incompatible. Users of v1.0.0 must bear this in mind when moving to v2.0.0.

HSAO v2.0.0 does not require SSP bridging on any platform. (HSAO v1.0.0 required SSP bridging on platforms without native support for HSAO v1.0.0.)

HSAO v2.0.0 should be used for the same types of network connections as v1.0.0. Detailed connection information can be found in the white paper “Getting Started with High Speed Add On (HSAO)”.

Base Release (v6.4)

New Features and Enhancements
To install this software, you should go to the Passport Advantage website, and follow instructions described to complete the download. The maintenance installations on Fix Central also support new and upgrade installation; the Fix Lists include the relevant instructions.

IBM Sterling Connect:Direct for Microsoft Windows has the following features and enhancements:
  1. Emergency Restore Support:
    • IBM Sterling Connect:Direct for Microsoft Windows 6.4 now supports Emergency Restore, providing the ability to quickly rollback to a previous version and achieve recovery of essential configurations and data during critical situations at scale using IBM Sterling Control Center Director. For more information, refer to Install Agent Parameters, CD_SRVR.INI Parameter Values and IBM Sterling Control Center Director.

      This feature is supported starting with IBM Sterling Connect:Direct Microsoft Windows 6.4 and later versions. Rollbacks are permitted only when upgrades or updates are performed using IBM Sterling Control Center Director from IBM Sterling Connect:Direct Microsoft Windows V6.4 to a higher version. However, rollbacks to earlier versions (e.g., 6.3 or 6.2) from 6.4 are not supported.

  2. Increased config file size in Integrated File Agent:
    • The maximum size of the configuration file in Integrated File Agent has been increased to 2 MB which enables larger number of rules and watch directories to be created.
  3. Logon Configuration Utility Support:
    • Logon configuration utility (LCU.bat) is added support for batch mode operation (-b) with reading input values from a file or another command's output or pipe.