Version 1.0.12.0 release notes (October 2018)

What's new

Upgrading

The appkg_install utility is introduced to install and manage IBM® approved third party software packages on the IBM IAS appliance. With this tool, you no longer need to backup and restore the third party software configurations manually after you upgrade IAS. The program currently supports the EMC NetWorker client. For more information, see Installing third-party software with appkg_install command

Platform Manager

• Platform Manager is now extracting database alerts from DSM and allows the user to configure email notification or automatic service requests (PMR). The alerts are also displayed by ap issues command with types DB_NEEDS_ATTENTION or DB_SERVICE_REQUESTED.
• Platform Manager is now monitoring firewalld service on appliance nodes. If that service stops unexpectedly, Platform Manager starts it. If starting fails, an alert with reason code 426 is raised.
• The user may now export platform management configuration (alerts rules, configuration parameters, SMTP configuration) by using a new ap config export command. The data can be imported, into the same machine or into another one, by running ap config import command.
• Platform Manager offers an alternative way of handling unreachable nodes. In this new mode, when a node is found unreachable, Platform Management immediately starts database recovery without waiting for the node recovery to complete. As a result, the system comes back online much quicker, but with reduced performance, that is, without one of the nodes. Nodes in this state are marked as Suspended in ap node command output. When the unreachable node is recovered, a manual action is needed to put it back in service. You can run ap node rebalance, or apstop and apstart- this action is causing an outage in database access. The new mode is disabled by default. To enable it, set suspend_unreachable_nodes configuration parameter to True by running the following command:

  ap config --set params suspend_unreachable_nodes=True

  Switching back to default mode can be achieved with the following command:

  ap config --set params suspend_unreachable_nodes=False

• Platform Manager is now sending event 814 when apiserver, ldap or spark components had to be recovered by Db2 HA service.
• Platform Manager is now monitoring SMT configuration of CPUs in appliance nodes, and if the configuration is not optimal, it is fixed. If Platform Manager cannot fix the configuration, it raises alert with reason code 113.

Backup and restore

In the web console and in the command line, the backup history no longer lists incremental backups that are not part of the current backup chain. db_restore verifies that an incremental backup being restored is part of the current backup chain.

Security

• The sudo and full path name requirement for the following commands has been removed, so that apuser or any ibmapadmin group user can now use the commands directly:
  • ap_ldap_user_add.pl
  • ap_ldap_user_mod.pl
  • ap_ldap_list.pl
  • ap_ldap_user_del.pl
  • ap_external_ldap.pl
  • ap_ldap_ppolicy.pl
• You can now enable IBM Security Guardium support using the apsetup command. For more information, see Enabling Guardium for database security.

Components

Resolved issues

• Fixed an issue where in case of a power outage impacting all the appliance nodes at the same, Platform Management software could not automatically start Db2wh containers when the power was restored.
• Fixed an issue with the ap node enable command failing due to GPFS problems. Platform Manager did not allow to enable that node again, displaying

  Could not complete command

  in the output of ap node enable command. To make it ready for enabling a node again, Platform Manager had to be restarted (apstop -p; apstart -p).
• If the system is configured to run TSM LAN-Free backup and restore, the DSMSTA service will be left running all the time except for when running non-TSM backup and restore.

Known issues

Unable to switch to external LDAP (without certificate) and AD with port 636 using LDAPS option

A CA certificate is required to enable platform with external Active Directory, as described in Configuring Windows Active Directory for platform authentication.

There is certificate and keystore configuration mismatch in the external AD settings for Db2 Warehouse container and platform:

• For Db2 Warehouse container, certificate and keystore are eliminated for AD;
• For platform, certificate is required for AD.

However, in the web console, if AD is selected as type, there is no field to upload certificate for platform settings with ap_external_ldap.pl .

As a workaround, use ap_external_ldap.pl enable instead of the web console for these configuration steps.

Platform Manager times out while starting the upgrade

When running apupgrade to start the upgrade on the appliance, Platform Manager might time out resulting in node0101 (or current head node) rebooting, or, in some cases, powering itself off.

Workaround:

Restart the database with apstop -p --service and apstart -p before upgrading to avoid this condition.