Release Notes

What's new in version 2021

October 2021

Version 2021 introduces a new versioning scheme and includes many improvements you and your customers will enjoy.

New versioning scheme

Version 2021 is a direct successor of Alloy Discovery 8. Focused on the continuous delivery of new features and capabilities while resolving issues identified in the existing products, we are switching to a single, year-based versioning scheme for all Alloy Software products. As a version number, 2021.1 provides much more visibility than, for example, 9.1, indicating the release date (actually, the year) and the release number within that year.

Updated audit tools

Alloy Audit Tools has been updated to version 2021. The latest version adds support to Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 and delivers other improvements and bug fixes. For a complete list of changes, see Audit Tools Update Release Notes.

Discontinued support for SAP Crystal Reports

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports, also called Microsoft Builder reports, have already swept away Crystal Reports in Alloy Discovery years ago. With version 2021, we officially announce the end of support for the SAP Crystal Reports integration with Alloy Discovery.

INFO: For upgrade considerations, see Version 8.7 or earlier.

Upgrade improvements

  • Now you can test drive the upgrade without affecting your production system. A new Sandbox Upgrade option in the Database Management tool allows you to preview and try new features using a sandbox database.

  • To improve the overall performance, provide richer integration capabilities, and just keep up with the times, we upgraded Alloy Discovery Enterprise to the 64-bit architecture. However, the transition could be a backward-incompatible change in 32-bit environments, encouraging you to switch to the modern 64-bit architecture.

  • Although we strive to avoid it, sometimes we are forced to break backward compatibility between versions. The new Alloy Discovery Enterprise notifies you of upcoming backward-incompatible changes in advance, giving you time to review them, estimate how they will affect your organization, and perform a seamless upgrade.

Enhanced discovery and audit

  • When running multiple Inventory Server instances on distributed networks, you can now designate one server as a "primary instance." Having a primary Inventory Server instance greatly improves audit snapshot processing performance.

  • Improved audit performance in environments with more than one Inventory Server instance.

  • Improved the error message displayed by the Direct Network Scan when the timeout period expires.

  • Fixed the issue with canceled "Check for new snapshots" tasks getting stuck in the Task List if the Inventory Server is restarted during their cancellation. This issue could cause failures with receiving snapshots on a schedule.

  • Improved audit performance in complex network environments thanks to the revised algorithm of querying network hubs and switches.

  • The audit of Cisco devices no longer fails when we are unable to obtain information from one of their VLANs. The audit completes successfully, while a corresponding message is added to the log.

  • Corrected the messages logged during the audit of audit sources. Previously, some messages could lead the user to believe that we audit nodes by their DNS names instead of IP addresses.

  • Improved performance when uploading audit snapshots from hypervisors.

Other changes and fixes

  • Resolved the issue causing "Incorrect syntax near ')'" errors in the database trace.

  • Fixed a typo in the Authentication label of the Connection Manager.