New and Changed Features

The following new and changed features are available in CA SDM r12.9:

Advanced Availability Configuration
EBR Search Engine - For customers upgrading from a previous release of CA SDM that used the FAST ESP search engine, must change to the EBR search engine. The FAST ESP license expires in May 2013. For more information, contact CA Support Online.
New KPIs for User and Session Counts - There are different session types defined in the system, for example, CA SDM Web UI, SOAP Web Services, REST Web Services, and so on. New KPIs have been introduced to count the number of unique licensed and unlicensed users that are logged in to the system, regardless of how many sessions each user has opened. For more information about the logged in user counts and session counts, see the Administration Guide.
Supportability Enhancements - Supportability enhancements reduce support volume or make troubleshooting and resolving customer incidents easier. These features help your support organization to identify the root cause of a reported failure more rapidly.
- Interval Logging Utility - CA SDM now allows you to use the Interval logging utility from the CA SDM web UI. The Interval Logging utility is used by CA Support to troubleshoot performance and memory-related issues by collecting CPU, Memory, database queries, and other statistics on a CA SDM installation at regular intervals. Users can specify the data that they want to collect from each CA SDM server that is installed on their environment. For more information, see the Administration Guide.
- Add Processes to CA SDM Servers - CA SDM now lets you add or modify processes and daemons the CA SDM servers using the CA SDM Web UI. You can configure object managers, web engines, web directors, and other processes for the CA SDM servers in your environment. This feature replaces the pdm_edit script functionality with a user interface. For more information, see the Administration Guide.
Federated Search Configuration - Using different adapters, you can integrate multiple search engines in CA SDM to provide a federated search capability. This search capability helps you to get search results from heterogeneous sources, Google, SharePoint, CA Open Space, and so on. You can also create a custom adapter. The custom adapter is a new adapter that you can create using the SDK. The custom adapter helps you to search your database that cannot be searched through the Google, SharePoint, and OpenSpace adapter.
CA Workflow Installation - CA Workflow is no longer bundled with the CA SDM r12.9 installation media. CA Workflow is only valid for existing users who were using the previous CA SDM releases. For the existing CA Workflow users, to install CA Workflow with the CA SDM r12.9, the CA SDM 12.7 installation media must be used. For more information, contact CA Support Online.
Important! The CA Workflow related documentation is only valid for the existing users who were using CA Workflow during the previous CA SDM releases.
UNC Support - All attachments, KT documents, and archived data are stored in shared resources which can be accessed using the UNC credentials. You need to create UNC credentials to allow users to access the shared resources from the CA SDM servers using the UNC path. The UNC component does not work when the CA SDM server is in the domain and the shared location is in the WORKGROUP. It is preferred to use a domain user credentials that is part of CA SDM server and the shared location. For more information, see the Administration Guide.
TLS Support in Emails - Enable TLS support in emails to enhance security. From the CA SDM Web UI, select Options Manager, Email and install mail_ca_cert_path and mail_smtp_use_tls options. For more information, see the Administration Guide.
CA SDM Mobile Enabler r2.0 mobile application is now deployed with CA SDM r12.9. For more information about the mobile application and how to use it, see the Administration Guide.
CA SDM r12.9 does not use the pdm_edit.pl script to create the process configuration, unlike previous releases of CA SDM. Any references of using the pdm_edit.pl script in the documentation are not valid and must be ignored. For example,
- Ignore the How to Configure Visualizer on a Secondary Server topic from the Implementation Guide. For more information about how to configure the visualizer, see the Administration Guide.
- Ignore the Configure Support Automation on a Secondary Server topic from the Implementation Guide. For more information about how to configure support automation, see the Administration Guide.
- The following files under pdmconf sample directory do not exist:
  - pdm_edit_usage_notes.htm
  - alias_install.bat
  - pdm_edit.pl
  - README_files
CA SDM r12.9 documents will be available on CA Answer Bar and on Flipboard (you have to download the Flipboard app on your mobile device) after the General Availability release of CA SDM r12.9.
Note: CA Answer Bar enables users to quickly find information from the relevant scenarios, guides, technical documents, Green Books, Green Papers, product status, and recommended reading. CA Answer Bar content is tagged using metadata. Tagged content is prioritized above indexed content to improve the relevancy of the search results.

Advanced Availability Configuration

The advanced availability configuration offers more resilience to server outages, higher application availability, and supports rolling maintenance with minimal end-user disruption. This configuration requires one background server, one or more standby servers, and one or more application servers. The previous configuration with primary and secondary servers is now known as the conventional configuration.

You can configure CA SDM to use either conventional or advanced availability configuration. You can also convert from one configuration to another.

The advanced availability configuration improves the overall availability of CA SDM in the following ways:

Minimizes the CA SDM application down time resulting from the application failure, hardware failure, or maintenance by reducing single point of the failure.
Minimizes the CA SDM downtime by supporting rolling maintenance of the servers. This means, the users keep working on the application while one of the servers is under the maintenance.
For more information about planning and configuring advanced availability, see the Implementation Guide or view the advanced availability scenarios directly from the bookshelf.