Release 3.10: Alibaba | AWS | KVM | Citrix XenServer

October 22, 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: AWS | Alibaba
Private Cloud: KVM | Citrix XenServer

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.

AWS

IPv6 support on Eth0 network interface.
Enabling or disabling IPv6 on the LAN setting depends on whether IPv6 has been added to the AWS scanner's network interface. Even if you disable IPv6 on the LAN in Qualys Cloud Platform, the IPv6 setting will be re-enabled upon reboot as long as an IPv6 address has been added to the scanner's network interface on the AWS side.
Support for Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) version upto 2.9.1g.
qVSA-AWS-3.10.89 AMI is now defaulted to use gp3 volume type

Alibaba

Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.

KVM

IPv6 ON LAN support
WAN interface/Split network mode support
Static VLAN Support (IPv4 and IPv6)
Static Routes support (IPv4 and IPv6)
IPv6 on LAN Support
Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.

Citrix XenServer

Allows to run 64-bit applications like NextGen WAS.

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 Features

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.
Scanners running OS with 32-bit kernel.

Known Issue

Alibaba

IPv6-only mode is not supported. The Scanner should not be configured in IPv6-only mode from the Scanner's Console.

Fixed Issue

Component/Category	Platform	Description
VMDR	AWS	EC2 scanner was not visible in the Scanner Appliance when users selected the platform 'EC2-VPC (All VPCs in Region) and Regions EU (Ireland)' in Qualys Cloud Platform. We have fixed this issue now by replacing the Scanner image in the AWS marketplace.