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Orion 8.5 - oh my!

It was a mistake to upgrade to Orion 8.5 on my production system. I have had Orion since it was only Solarwinds - many years. I upgraded 8.1 to 8.5 and then had no web access, supposedly due to a problem with DirectLink. Patched, but no go. After several emails and phone calls (see my other post "Support is not so good anymore"), dutifully sending the requisite "diagnostics log" file (tech #1), I was sent a newer Orion version that would "for sure" fix it (tech #2), and it did not. No web access. During this time we had two major network incidents and our helpdesk had no access to the web info. After more phone calls, got someone (tech #3) to assist and now I have web access (thank you!) but the font is messed up and we need to run a "Repair" (scares the heck out of me) Thursday during our normal maint hours. When I tried to recreate the funky font resource to see if that would help, the option for adding a Resource: Node List - Custom Grouping and Filtering is simply not there, which probably has something to do with why its font is messed up. All of my custom-entered bandwidths are gone - I had to spend all afteroon fixing them and at least one will not let me change it to gig from whatever it picked up automatically. We were getting deluged with "high bandwidth" alerts till I realized what had happened. I suggest that if possible you upgrade in a lab environment or at the very least have a tech scheduled to assist if things go awry - a tech who has time to stick with you till your issues are resolved. Stay tuned. -Debbi

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dhibberd

Debbi, I'm very sorry you have had problems upgrading to Orion v8.5. As you have seen, we have undergone a lot of change here at SolarWinds in the last 12 months. Our support load has increased as we have grown as a company, and we have been hiring additional support techs to provide the level of service that you have become accustomed to. We have also had a lot of growth in Europe, and have opened an office in Ireland to service our customers there.

The v8.5 version of Orion was a major release for us from a product architecture perspective. We needed to make some major changes to the Orion website architecture so that we can move more of the System Manager functionality to the web console. In addition, we are continuing to expand the capabilities of Orion by adding modules, and the web architecture needed to change in order to better accommodate that. The problem that we experienced, was that although we did extensive testing of v8.5 prior to release, in some customer environments we experienced some problems that prevented the new website from displaying correctly. We have released two hotfixes to address some of these issues, and today we released a service release for Orion (v8.5.1) which should address the remaining issues.

Thanks for your great feedback on Thwack, We read every message posted here, and we are working hard to continuously improve our products, and our customer support.

FormerMember

As Doug said, we had several dozen beta testers who found many issues before GA, but the wide variability among Orion customers meant that we still missed more issues than we would have liked. In an effort to improve the process, we plan to introduce a Release Candidate "customer acceptance" phase before the next GA. We'll allow any customer to install the Release Candidate and provide feedback for a few weeks before GA. This process should expand pre-release customer testing even more, allowing for a better quality GA product. No one will be forced to test the RC, but we know there are a lot of Orion customers who would enjoy being "test pilots" if it gets them new functionality sooner. We're optimistic that this change in process will lead to a smoother upgrade process for the next release. And, again, our apologies that it hasn't gone better for you.

Debbi

Thanks for your responses. Since I have already tried 8.5.1 and it did not help, I am not sure what my recourse will be. One of the techs will be helping me in a few days to try to get things working again completely.

I think it's a great idea to get some customers to volunteer to test a release.

Debbi

dperdue

Debbi, what is the ticket number for this case?

mark_wiggans

which probably has something to do with why its font is messed up.

Debbi- do your fonts look like the screen shot in this post?

Debbi

Hope my attachment will work OK on this post. I am posting one of my Orion screens. You can see the Correct normal font on the right and the funky font on the left. It may have something to do with the Resource. When I try to recreate this Resource (custom grouped by snmp location), I no longer see the option for grouping in this way:

To enable grouping and filtering on a node list:
1. Click Admin in the top menu bar.
2. Create a new view or edit an existing view.
3. Click + to display the Add Resources page.
4. Select Node Lists > Node list – Custom Grouping and Filtering, and then click Submit.

This number 4: Node List - Custom Grouping and Filtering does not exist on my installation anymore since 8.5. Is it there on yours? So I cannot recreate the resource to see if that fixes the font. I will also attempt to attach what I see when I "Select Node Lists" in the above instructions in a second post to this thread.

I hesitate to give you my case number because I don't want to do anything to make the tech mad at me because he is the only one who is giving me real help on this! It is I who asked him to wait till this next Tuesday to assist me during our next maintenance window. -Debbi

anselm

to post a pic hit Reply->Options ->upload file ;-)

to post multiple pics use the awkward content selector.

Debbi

I would like to post two thumbnails here but not sure the best way to do it. if I "upload file" it is not pretty! -Debbi

Screen font.JPG

hez

Denny,

Just needed to welcome this change in the product upgrade process. I think the community will really appreciate an Release candidate phase. Hopefully we will then get rid of the "normal" hotfix release the first weeks after a new version has been made available to the public

/heZ

Network_Guru

Personally I think it is a mistake to upgrade to a newer release if your current installation is not running correctly.
This can just mask the problem & has the potential to break other things as well.
Unless there is some new MUST HAVE feature or functionality, upgrading to fix a problem is not addressing the root cause.

As for support, my impression is that many of them have never worked in an Enterprise environment where you can't just make changes to your NPM software anyday or time.
If you are monitoring 1000's of nodes and have customers accessing your web site 7x24, then you can't just run the repair install without a scheduled change control. This goes back again to running a stable NPM platform for all your customers & users.
If it's broken, then upgrading may not fix it & will most likely break other things that are working now.