I am happy to announce General Availability (GA) of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) v7.4. This version includes the following new features and improvements:
- Cisco IOS and ASA Vulnerability Reporting
NCM uses Cisco IOS and ASA firmware and configuration vulnerability data from the National Vulnerability Database to record which nodes in NCM are vulnerable. This information is available in a new Firmware Vulnerability resource and as a report. - NCM Entirely Web-based
The NCM desktop application is no longer available and all functionality has migrated to the SolarWinds Orion Web Console. - New Compliance Reports
- You can run over 60 Defense Information Systems Agency Security Technical Implementation Guide (DISA STIG) policy reports, preconfigured with the necessary rules and policies.
- You can run National Institute of Standards and Technology Federal Information Security Management Act (NIST FISMA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) reports.
- Device Template Wizard
- Create and edit device templates using the new, web-based Device Template Wizard in the SolarWinds Orion Web Console.
- All templates from previous versions of NCM are migrated to the SolarWinds Orion database during an upgrade.
- Access templates that other SolarWinds users share through thwack directly in Device Template Management.
- Enhanced Change Approval Workflow
The NCM approval system allows three different workflows:- Use a one-tier approval workflow to submit configuration changes to an NCM administrator.
- Use a non-privileged, two-tier approval workflow to require non-privileged users (any user with the WebUploader role) to submit configuration changes to two different approval groups.
- Use an inclusive, two-tier approval workflow to require all users to submit configuration changes to two different approval groups.
- Web-based Reports
- Create and edit reports using new, web-based reports.
- NCM now uses Orion Platform reports (HOME > Reports) instead of the NCM reporting pages (CONFIGS > Reports).
- Previous reports are not migrated to the web-based reports system and can no longer be edited after an upgrade.
- Schedule reports with the Orion Report Schedulers instead of the NCM Run Report job.
- Policy Violation Remediation
You can automatically remediate violations in a device configuration on multiple nodes using a script. - Web-based Alerts
- Create and manage alerts using the web-based alerting engine.
- Alerts created using the desktop-based alerting engine are automatically migrated to the web-based alerting engine.
More details can be found in the Release Notes and in the RC blog post: Network Configuration Manager v7.4 Release Candidate is Available!.