Release 3.10: IBM | Nutanix | Proxmox | VMware

October 03, 2024

The operating system for Virtual Scanner cannot be upgraded. You need to replace the scanner image or deploy a new scanner with the latest image, although this may not always be necessary. For details on when scanner replacement is necessary, refer to the Know when scanner replacement is needed section.

What's New?

This release brings new features and updates to supported cloud platforms, data centers, and desktop platforms.

Public Clouds: IBM Cloud Classic Infrastructure | IBM Cloud VPC Infrastructure
Private Cloud: Nutanix | Proxmox
Non Cloud: VMWare

Availability of scanners in cloud marketplaces depends on cloud vendors and typically takes a few weeks after general availability from Qualys.
This version is not limited to the platforms listed above. In the upcoming releases, it will be available for all other supported virtualization platforms.

New Features

With this release, we have introduced new features for the following platforms.

IBM Cloud Classic Infrastructure

Dual stack mode support(IPv4 and IPv6)
Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.

IBM Cloud VPC Infrastructure

Dual stack mode support(IPv4 and IPv6)
Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.

Nutanix

Dual stack mode support(IPv4 and IPv6)
IPv6 only mode support
WAN interface/Split network mode support
VLAN Support
Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.

Proxmox

Dual stack mode support(IPv4 and IPv6)
IPv6 only mode support
Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.

VMWare

Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.
New vApp variable 'PREFER_USERDATA'
Default value: FALSE

If 'PREFER_USERDATA' is set to FALSE, changes made via Scanner VM Console takes precedence over user-data settings specified via vApp options; if set to TRUE, all changes made via Scanner VM Console is overridden by user data settings on scanner reboot.

Enhancements for all Supported Platforms

With this release, you get several improvements to enhance the handling of read-only filesystem conditions caused by virtual disk store outages. It also includes logging improvements such as a regular dump of systems stats and metrics for better overload troubleshooting. These improvements are applicable to all supported platforms.

qVSA-3.10.x is equipped with 64-bit kernel. All previous virtual scanners will continue to work with a 32-bit kernel. There is no performance impact on 32-bit kernel Scanners.
It improves compatibility with modern hypervisors and improves networking performance.
The scanner VM size max limit of 16 cores and 16 GB RAM has been removed.
Recommended CPU:RAM ratio continues to be 1:2 or 1:3 as per available configurable sizes on the virtualization platform.
The default standard network interface MTU setting of 1500 is replaced by the DHCP option 'interface-mtu', which gets the interface's MTU setting from the DHCP server used in a customer environment.
The rotated syslog messages file names changed from *.n.gz to *-<date>.gz

Deprecated Common Feature

With this release, we have deprecated the following common feature.

The maximum supported size for a virtual scanner instance with 16 CPU cores and 16 GB RAM has been deprecated, but the recommended 1:2 CPU: RAM ratio still applies.

Known Issues

Following are the known issues when deploying the scanner image on the following platforms.

Proxmox

The scanner gets personalized successfully without any errors. However, cloud-meta-data shows that instance-id is showing 'Not specified' and DMI_SERIAL is 'UNKNOWN'.

Workaround: Do not enable cloud-init drive for already personalized via console scanners.

IBM

Currently, IPv6 scanning in IBM (Classic and VPC infrastructure) is not supported.