Software discovery in containers

BigFix Inventory supports discovery of software in container images through standard discovery methods that includes catalog signatures, template signatures, installation registry and ISO SWID tags to cover traditional model of software deployment.

In addition, the application provides information about software running in containers, the container instances with basic properties and their current status. This information allows to determine the software deployment across container resources that are allocated.

A new plugin framework is available to communicate with the Kubernetes APIs of on-premise and public cloud containers, to determine software usage of container instances.

Collection of container details is with the use of two configurations:

Kubernetes-based solutions that are compatible with standard Kubernetes API v1.18 or newer. For details, see notes.
Generic Kubernetes API available in case own access method is preferred.

Note: Examples of compatible solutions verified in test lab environment are:

Vanilla (unmodified) Kubernetes v1.18, v1.21, v1.23, and v1.24
Google Cloud v1.20
RedHat OpenShift Container Platform v4.9

For information on how to verify BigFix Inventory Containers solution with your Kubernetes cluster, refer to the section “Kubernetes Cluster Test Procedure” in the detailed containers document.

11.0.0 In version 11.0.0, the Containers report is added to show container images with information about the pod, image, resources, annotations, and labels.

For managing IBM software in Containers, refer to the IBM strategy and solution FAQ. BigFix Inventory is certified for IBM Virtualization Capacity License reporting on physical machines, virtual machines on-premise and in the cloud. For IBM Certified Containers the only approved licensing counting is through IBM License Service. For feedback or questions regarding this capability, contact IBM.

Currently, BigFix Inventory Software Discovery in Containers is limited to software discovery only without license management capability but provides visibility to a large set of vendor software in Kubernetes compatible environments including Red Hat OpenShift.

As BigFix Inventory feature improves, support for a wide variety of license management within containers will be added, beyond IBM/Red Hat container license management, such as Microsoft, Adobe, SAP, HP, BMC, CA, Citrix, Corel Symantec, TIBCO, and VMware.

HCL looks forward to continue partnership with IBM/Red Hat to address their container license management as a leading software vendor.

Note: The detailed containers document is available as PDF accessible through link “Discovering software inventory with BigFix Inventory Container Solution” on “Download the BigFix Inventory Container Solution Packages (version)” fixlet.