NPM 2020.2 RC now available!
It's my pleasure to introduce our latest release candidate of Network Performance Monitor, available now in your customer portal.
Version 2020.2 is the next release following NPM 2019.4 and is compatible with the Orion Platform 2020.2. This is the first of three articles diving into the new features of this release, with this one focusing on Microsoft Azure Networking. The other major features delivered in this release are MIBs Database Management and Device View Improvements. More information on this release can be found in the RC Announcement.
Microsoft Azure Networking
Starting with NPM 2020.2, you can monitor traffic on Azure Network Gateways and Site-to-Site Connections on monitored Microsoft Azure cloud accounts. This will allow you to see the connections between your datacenter and the Azure cloud. This feature monitors the status of the VPN Gateway as well as it's connections, to include ingress and egress bandwidth utilization.
NPM shares components of this integration with SAM and VMAN to cohesively provide comprehensive visibility into your Azure environment. Shared components include:
- Add Cloud Account wizard
- Manage Cloud Accounts page
- Cloud Summary page
Because of this exciting new feature, NPM customers are now able to:
- Add a new dashboard resource (added by default to the Cloud Summary page) which displays traffic segmented by Azure region and direction.
- Easily view Azure Network Gateways with helpful information including gateway name, status, type, associated virtual networks, key telemetry, IP address, and number site-to-site connections.
- And quickly drill into the details of those site-to-site connections, with easy-to-use filters so that you can efficiently find the specific connection you're looking for.
All data is polled using the Azure REST API. Given that Microsoft begins to charge for API calls once a certain threshold is reached, the Orion suite of products has been designed to efficiently share information between product modules to reduce the number of calls necessary to monitor your environment. Information in the Azure API is updated every 10 seconds and the default polling interval for this feature is 5 minutes, but this is configurable during and after setup.
To get started, use the "Add Cloud Account" wizard to add an Azure account to NPM. The wizard will display all the relevant steps for installed Orion Platform products. The wizard can be accessed from the Orion Web Console, by going to "My Dashboards" -> Cloud, and then clicking "Monitor My Cloud" on the "Getting Started" widget.
Once your Azure account has been added, you can find your new Azure networking visibility features by going to "My Dashboards" -> Cloud. If you have other Orion Platform products with Azure support, such as SAM and VMAN, the Cloud Summary page can include additional widgets and subviews.
Settings for this feature can be found under Settings -> All Settings -> Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Settings.
For more detailed information, check out the NPM 2020.2 RC Administrator's Guide!
With this NPM RC, comes some fantastic new updates & enhancements to the Orion Platform which include:
- Monitor up to 1,000,000 elements per Orion Platform instance.
- An Orion Map to Success! - Orion Maps improvements, such as creating and customizing text boxes, labels, or layouts, incorporating custom icons, adding shapes, dynamic backgrounds, bulk administration and all-new Time Travel.
- Performance enhancements.
- Dashboards, Dashboards, Get Your Dashboards! All New Custom Summary Dashboards
- A Gateway To Your Fastest Upgrade Ever! - Upgrade improvements, such as pre-staging upgrades, upgrade plan reports, automating upgrades via Orion SDK.
- Enhanced volume status.
- 3rd Party Language Pack Support - scripts to extract UI texts from the Orion Web Console.
Your Feedback Counts!
The NPM team is incredibly interested in your feedback, and on top of that, when you participate by downloading and installing the RC, you get THWACK points. More importantly, your feedback shapes how we develop our products. Post your thoughts, questions, and concerns into the RC forum and not only will you be able to get some SolarWinds swag, but you may help to make NPM a better product. If you have a particularly compelling idea, you should also consider putting in a Feature Request and encouraging others to vote on your idea.