Lets hear em'!We are going to wait for a few "reviews" to come in before jumping in.Who's first?
We haven't made the upgrade yet, but I'm excited about the Unpluggable Node Mode. We have a few nodes which power off regularly and with this we can can still monitor them without having them go down, instead of putting them in the un-managed status manually.
We've made the jump with great success, probably the smoothest upgrade for us.
Upgraded, two seperate Orion SLX servers and two addiational pollers. We have every module except the VoIP and thus far everything has been running smoothly.
Let me know if you have any specific questions...
For those that have upgraded both NPM and NCM, does NCM have a better Real Time Config Change alert feature?
The automated Emails need to be adjusted to allow us users to define the email guts.
I detest having to see these lines for every config change email:
please SW, let us have more controll over the body and subjent of the RTCNs.
Also, I thought I saw a bullet item that with NPM 9.5 the syslog page has been revamped to a more "advanced syslog page". Looking at the demo though, it looks exactly the same as the previous versions. Will SW ever implement GOBs custom syslog page, which IMHO, is better than any syslog parser out there?
last but not least, what sort of changes has anyone noticed regarding UnDP? I thought SW was going to address this interface as numerous suggestions / complaints have been made about the UnDP.
Has UnDP been overhauled?
Thanks!
Am I correct in thinking that the 9.5 version only supports asp.net and no longer supports asp?
Correct, please see this post here
I wish my upgrade went smooth, but it didn't. My previous polling engine machine was unstable after going from 8.x to 9.x. Support recommended that I set up a new polling engine machine a while back, but I had to after the upgrade to 9.5 which gave me a LOT of errors regarding legacy pollers not supported on the main page.
What I cannot find on the site is how to configure AD integrated authentication again using Windows Server 2008/IIS7. That is the only thing left that does not work for me.
The Cisco wireless controller support looks great!
For those who want to use passthrough AD authentication on Windows Server 2008/IIS7, you need to make sure when you install IIS, you include the role service "Windows Authentication" which is in the "security" section.
After you have this installed, you can disable "Anonymous Authentication" and enable "Windows Authentication" for the SolarWinds NetPerfMon site.
The Administrators guide needs to be updated to include Windows 2008 instructions, since they differ from Windows 2003.
Does anyone know if this version still supports SQL2000 ?
Cheers
The installer checks for SQL Server 2005 or later. If it finds 2000 it stops the upgrade
Therefore I would say that it is not supported
Not impressed.
Its again just a version number change for me.
i was waiting for few features like
Correct, NPM 9.5 only support SQL 2005 and 2008, please see this previous post where we pre-announced support ending for SQL 2000 here
Overall: Good! Actually, for a .5 upgrade, I'd lean towards Great!
Detaching Network Atlas from the Orion server is a nice win. I haven't explored the metrics thing yet, but it looks to be a great addition for the maps. Also like the better zoom view in NA. Gob's advanced syslog parser still works, which I didn't expect.
The details I haven't figured out yet:
1) I've always modified the mapview.asp to get rid of the node list that shows up below most maps. With the .asp upgrade, it looks like that code has been changed or moved, but I'm not sure where. Alternatively, a way to get rid of the node list below the maps from the UI would be fine.
2) Edit tab, size & position. There are 4 digits for both the x and y coordinates, which I think are xx.xx and yy.yy. I'm trying to change the position of the selected object by typing in the x and y fields, and getting strange results. If I hit 'delete' to delete the existing number while I'm in the 'x' field, it deletes the selected shape.
3) Digits. Using this tag: Up: ${Outbps} (${OutPercentUtil}) Down: ${Inbps} (${InPercentUtil}) on my interface labels now gives 6 digits (00.0000) instead of 4 (00.00) which mashes up the formatting on my maps. Not a huge problem, but 4 digits seems generally a bit excessive.
Last and least.. for a next release I'm looking for the ability to display the results of a UnDP on a map. My datacenter 'map' is a series of racks, with network lines from each machine in the rack to display bandwidth and ports being used. I can get the Amps per rack from the PDU via UnDP, and I'd like to display that on the map of the rack. The "Add a custom field and populate it via a custom sql query" does work, but it's a little kludgy to add a field to every single node when I only need it for the PDU's.
UnDP's on maps are on the roadmap for a future release
MapView.aspx currently does not support removing the node list. Since there would be only one resource left if you removed the list, you can use the Detach Resource feature (click on a resource heading to display it separately). So if you add a new map resource and configure it to display a map you want there, then the resource, when detached, can substitute the mapview.asp without the node list.
Thank you MichalB.
That does work for maps displayed in node or interface views. I can't get it to work in map views, or when clicking on a nested map on a map view. I'll start a post on that question, and leave this thread for first impressions.
-J
If you create a resource for each map you have, then you could use the Detach Resource for each of them, and you could set the hyperlink of each node representing a map to the Detach Resource page instead.
I know it is complicated and seems like a lot work, but it is the only work-around I can think of right now.
I have installed on my test envirenment before roling it out to my 2 production enviorinments. So far so good, like a lot of the new features. One I am still hoping gets in soon is the 1) the ability to add notes to an alert acknowledgement so support can add, and 2) have solarwinds track to alertlog table who and when acknowledged an alert, right now it gets cleared when alert clears and no way to track it for historical purposes.
I've lost almost every custom thing I've done with Orion.
Now if you had a Map tree and a single element on that tree is unmanaged or unknown, it makes the top icon Unmanaged or Unknown. Previously, it would be green, yellow or orange. If something is unmanaged or unknown I already know about it. I want to know real-time status like Up, Warning, or Down. I don't need to know if some submap of a map has an unmanaged or unknown node. Furthermore, why do map links now open in a new window everytime? I don't want a new browser window for every view I go to. All the links to views I had generated previously don't work (eg localhost/.../View.asp ... broken). Several resources just flat out flop and I get an website error when I go to edit them. The new Network Atlas mapping program is really slow... AND it keeps crashing on me. I had to installed 9.5 twice thinking the first time there was some anamolous problem... The intaller failed to importall of my maps.. I had to run the import wizard manually to get the rest of them.
Hopefully someone can read about these problems I've been having and offer a solution. To sum it all up.
Network Atlas is really slow and crashes often. It's showing maps unmanaged or unknown if only one element anywhere on the map or submaps is unmanaged. On the website, clicking on a map opens a new browser window (which I hate). My old hyperlinks to views (localhost/.../View.asp ) don't work anymore. Several of the resources just dont work at all. The maps that do work sometimes just hang and it breaks everything on the page until the map finishes trying to load (which sometimes it does not).
Have you opened a Support case so we can get the appropriate logs and look into what is happening? The maps opening into a new window is a known issue and we have a defect filed against that to resolve.
I've lost almost every custom thing I've done with Orion.Now if you had a Map tree and a single element on that tree is unmanaged or unknown, it makes the top icon Unmanaged or Unknown.
Now if you had a Map tree and a single element on that tree is unmanaged or unknown, it makes the top icon Unmanaged or Unknown.
This is rediculous. Add this to one of the many issues I'm finding out about now. All of my nested maps are doing the same thing. I'm basically going to have to rebuild all of them.
I'm beginning to wonder if anyone tested this update at all before relase.
I have a few cases opened. I'm going to be downgrading back to 9.1 soon, but if there are certain logs or diagnostics I can gather to submit to help resolve these issues I'm having for a service pack or something I can provide them. I just need to know what Is required.
people need to remember to back there stuff up before attempting the upgrade. We have Orion on a VM server. I take a VM snapshot, which takes seconds, prior to the upgrade. If the upgrade works, great. If not, I revert to my snapshot, and in seconds, Im back to a fully functioning 9.1SP5.
I will be attempting the upgrade in about 2 hours. I have a TON of customized stuff. Everything that can be customized, has been, so hopefully all goes well.
If not, I have my snapshot, and I will be back at 9.1 SP5 in less than 2 minutes.
I've upgraded two servers today - one went without a hitch and the other kept failing when running the configuration wizard so in the end I did a total uninstall and started from scratch which went ok.
First impressions - the wireless module is very handy for me - a big thumbs up.
On the replacement for map maker I love that you can now do bulk changes to the icons used for your devices and drag multiple devices onto the map in one go - this has been long overdue. It's a shame you can't do bulk changes to the text labels that go with them though. I always set mine to have a border and non-transparent background which can take a while with hundreds of nodes to edit individually.
I liked it when you could edit nodes in the web interface from v9 , but now they've taken it a step further and stopped you editing them in system manager which I'm not keen on.
More thoughts as and when I've had chance to play more.
So far so good... Just did a fresh SLX installation using 9.5... This was a new purchase, was planning on 9.1SP5 but, ended up with 9.5.0. I havn't had a good chance to play with it.
One thing I'm still disappointed in is that there is no AD authentication built in without the EOC... I wish I didn't have to create user accounts manually and could just use an AD group for user authentication... Eh...
Well I'm jealous. I'm kind of dissapointed it didn't work out for me the first go round. I have to go through and note all the customizations I've done, and update them to be compatible with the upgrade. I too was impressed by the map maker... not sure why it kept crashing on me. I hope to get around to cranking up 9.5 again soon - the whole fouling up last Friday morning left me feeling bitter about the whole thing. Hopefully the next upgrade will go smoothly.
Over all i like the way you guys are going with 9.5. One thing i have noticed is that since you moved the maps to the database they are incredibly slow to load... When i open up my Network Summary Home every thing on the page loads in no time flat except the maps. Maps seem to take between 30 and 45 seconds longer to load than before. Is anyone else seeing this?
I saw the same thing. At the time I had assumed it had something to do with the error messages I was seeing when I ran the configuration wizard (can't note them now).
Maps are overall slower, but more consistent. My front map page, which is just a map with 20 submaps listed, takes 8-10 seconds now as opposed to 3-5 before.
However, my office maps all take about 3-5 now, even the ones with circular references in them. Before, they took around 30 seconds to load, if they loaded at all.
I've since changed my circular references to be (manual hyperlinks in unattached objects) instead of submaps, which brings me to my next minor gripe. An unattached object now comes up with 'status unknown' tooltip if you hover the mouse over it. I would think it wouldn't have a tooltip at all, or it would be customizable. I use unattached objects as navigation buttons for my maps, and the 'status unknown' for them just confuses things.
Had to relink nested maps.
Reports links in views broke, am having to readd.
One of my custom pollers stopped working.
Some pages don't display correctly now in that things don't quite fit in their allotted space. Page doesn't seem to size itself according to size of IE window. I'm not quite sure how to fix this one.
I don't know what I like about it yet, since I've been busy fixing things.
Hi,
My impressions until now:
Don't like:1) Maps are incredibly slow to load so i removed them from the page Had already negative feedback the flashy is gone hope this will be improved (i keep checking Twack)2) I had an issue with the Jobengine () Issue is fixed (i hope i don't run into it after the next SP install)3) Issue with a report () I got a quick fix hope the issue is resolved in the next SP4) Today i noticed some reports lost their settings. When exporting data is spread over 2 pages and i can't get it right.... When sorting in reports (volume percentage used) i don't get the expected results.5) Really struggling in finding the things i was used to do in the system manager and now have to do in the web console6) Network Atlas somewhat disappointing - The icon list is still from early 80's - Performance (connecting and loading data) is somewhat slow (even on the server). - I like the fact that i don't have to do mapmaking at the server but.....maps are slow so i don't use it.
7) Still missing the posibility to add Application objects on a map.I Like:- Wireless options- Pop-ups when going over nodes with the mouse pointer- Integration of the Syslogparser (please add same thing for traps).- Performance of the website (only without maps)To summarise i am looking forward to SP1Greets
Has anyone else noticed that the event colors have changed and now some of the up events and down events are the same color? Was this really the intention? I know it may sound petty, but I glance at the Last 25 Events screen often and the new pastel coloring scheme just isn't as easy to view anymore. Just my .02
For example, all of my APM component or application monitors are green for up and down events.
Less than 24 hours into 9.5 I have mixed feelings.
There are some things I like better such as node description pop ups and the new map designer tool. But there are things left out that I wish had made it in such as a tool that logs changes that users make to nodes, maps, etc. This is critical. This version also seems quite slow at loading maps, graphics, etc. In the end, I am not that excited about the changes but not disappointed either.
We recently installed 9.1 Orion on our network and I had done lot of customization on it but within three weeks of installing 9.1 we have 9.5 and I thought what the hack lets upgrade. First issue I had was that now that wireless in now integrated with NPM our sales rep should have mentioned that we don't need to buy wireless module because it will be discontinued. Now it is wasted money for us ...
Some of the issues I have right now are related to Maps.
1) Maps opening new window everytime.
2) ${Outbps} and ${Inbps} variables output goes upto four decimal which screws up the maps.
3) All the nested maps are in Unknown state now and even relinking them does not solve the problem.
4) ${DateTime} variable on the maps longer work when attached to a node. I was using it to show when the map was created.
5) Netflow reports links (Top transmitters 24 hours) don't even open up and server goes into a hang state. Same is true with Trap link.
avnishb,
The first two items are known issues we have logged into our defect system to address. Have you opened a support case for the other three, so we can get those looked into and logged
My first impression (from the demo, we won't be installing it anytime soon) is I don't like how all the resources have been "White-ified" like NCM. All resource blocks are white, bland and make all the data blend together. I'm not really keen on loosing my gradient shaded resource headers. When you have views loaded full of resources and information, making everything so vanilla will just make it like trying to read alphabet soup.
I agree with Chris, I like the gradient looks better. Is there a selectable option for this like there is for the color?
I'm sorry you guys don't like the new NCM-like look! The NCM look was very popular, so we thought we'd apply it to Orion NPM as well. We had the best intentions. I have to admit, I do like vanilla Maybe you like mint chocolate chip?
You can still change the color and it will bring back a gradient header. An example is below - 'steel blues'.
That's the perfect example, steel blues is what we use!
I can see the benefit to both and maybe after using the other one for a while it would be ok but it's hard to give up the blues...
As long as you can still change the color, I'll be good. My gradient is a customized shaded image, anyway, that I hack into the color options along with my brushed metal bar and CSS formatting, to include my "Admin icon button" each time I upgrade.
We upgraded to 9.5 on Tuesday and still trying to get things working right. We run a main poller, 2 additional pollers, seperate web abd SQL. We cannot (and this is even after hours on phone with support) get the wireless views to load (no sign of them in manage views listing) one of our add'nl pollers has all our Aruba wireless on it. Massive issues with multiple Job Engines kicking off and sucking up all CPU. oh and we see no updates to data for over 10hrs now on all devices on this poller, although system manager shows everything up ok.
Not all wireless do not show up in the wireless manager. It seems like the wireless section will not install and support cannot correct it. no word back from development and they have had the diag for 2 days. Anyone else have any of these issues?????
Similar issues here. I haven't yet tried migrating to 9.5 since the last time I tried a couple months ago. I have 9.5 installed in the hot standby version on a second server in an attempt to work out the kinks. 9.5 with the latest SPs seems to work well.. a lot better than it did when I first attempted the install. A lot of my customizations within the ASP and view resources are broke because most of it doesn't seem to work the same way, but all in all just the Orion portion of the upgrade appears solid. I'll have to rewrite my customizations and make a few changes in the database here and there before I can deploy to production. Not any time soon unfortunately.
We upgraded to 9.5 on Tuesday and still trying to get things working right. We run a main poller, 2 additional pollers, seperate web abd SQL. We cannot (and this is even after hours on phone with support) get the wireless views to load (no sign of them in manage views listing) one of our add'nl pollers has all our Aruba wireless on it. Massive issues with multiple Job Engines kicking off and sucking up all CPU. oh and we see no updates to data for over 10hrs now on all devices on this poller, although system manager shows everything up ok. Not all wireless do not show up in the wireless manager. It seems like the wireless section will not install and support cannot correct it. no word back from development and they have had the diag for 2 days. Anyone else have any of these issues?????
What's your ticket number?
Mike,
Im confused. When I got off the phone with you and Raz yesterday, we had reconnected to your existing database. This was only to get your production machine back online after testing with a NEW database.
-after running the config wizard to create a new DB and website, everything was working fine. Wireless section of the website was visible and after adding the above device manually, it began to poll and data was collected on it. Correct?
In last speaking with you and Raz, you both acknowledged it was a DB issue and you would address it. What were your findings?
Please be sure to post information as such on the forum so we can have as much correct information in the thread as possible. This will assist the people that are searching the forum.
regards,
Charles Hammond
I went to upgrade Orion again thinking it's been long enough for all the issues to blow over. I'm sorry to report that they have not.
The main problem this time is all my maps are completely screwed up. First problem was all the linkes I manually assigned pointing to views I created on the website no longer work. I suppose this is because it was an older construction of the URL that is no longer supported in this new version of Orion. Secondly, individual nodes fail to load their view at all. I get the following error when I try to open any node:
Your specfic error is:
Invalid object name 'NPM_NV_WL_CONTROLLERS_V'.
Is the new way maps are displayed in Orion a requirement? Is it not possible to just have them display as they used to?
For some reason when I click on a LED linked to a specific view, instead of going to that view it appears the page just refreshes and does not got to that view. I've tried several different ways, on several different computers, but without doing anything at all, the links do not work.
I think while I wait for a reply to this message I'll start looking around the web for a replacement for Orion.
Have you seen these thread here
Mainly rerun the config wizard after changing compat levels on the DB. Please let us know.
On the maps issue, can you give me an example of what the link you manual set looks like?
as for the links between maps, you might be interested in this thread:
I will have to say great first impression! Install went smooth with minor errors but over all smooth. I wish you guys would add a reoccurring scheduled maintenance button for those of us who have scheduled maintenance. I get tired of getting spammed on maintenance day.
Glad to hear everything went pretty well! This is something we do want to add regarding scheduling maintanance windows, just have not gotten to it yet.
I'm glad to see some had a smooth upgrade. I suppose I'm just unlucky. Everything is looking a lot better. The APM folder was still located in my website directory for some reason. After I deleted it my links started working correctly again. Thanks for all the input.
One thing I found was that I'm unable to edit existing nodes from NPM. When I open the details on a node to manage, rename, ect. everything is grayed out. When I click manage it opens the webpage to a display of all the details for the node. How can I make it so that I can make changes within NPM again?
Daniel
dhardy, you might want to start a new thread in the NPM forum for this issue. I have a feeling you might need to open a support ticket, though...
Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you, most things appear stable now, only issues we are still battling with are:
JobEngine35.sdf file will remain stable size (5 days) at 65M then sunddenly shoot up to 120M once it hits 100M it starts affecting performance and causing services to stop.
Constant DR Watson errors kicking off on the web server with w3wp system violation errors
Main Poller always getting a message of JobEngineWorker rncounted an error and needed to close, it restarts, but I would assume it should not be doing this.
Hi MikeC--
Hmmm...you might try looking at this post and see if it helps. Otherwise, anyone in the community care to chime in?
Thanks
Marie
Are you sure??
