Feature Release: April 2024 Summary

As we ramp up for the first SolarWinds User Group of 2024, we’re pleased to share even more enhancements. SolarWinds Observability is designed with continuous improvement in mind, ensuring you always have access to the latest features and enhancements. The updates we provide are part of an ongoing effort to refine and expand our services, and the list shared represents merely a snapshot of our comprehensive update process. Rest assured, our commitment to innovation means more improvements are always being rolled out to enhance your experience.

Enhancements and improvements

This month, we’ve released enhancements and improvements in digital experience monitoring, application performance monitoring, databases, infrastructure, Kubernetes, hosts/agents, virtualization, and platform.

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)

• POST data functionality has been added as a part of website entity monitoring.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

• APM instrumentation of serverless services based on the AWS Lambda functions is available.
• The Relative Start Time column has been added to the Trace Breakdown table in trace details. This table can be sorted by this column.
• The APM Data Volume dashboard includes additional metrics and improvements.
• Smart search bar is added to APM dashboard tabs.
• To indicate the current status, KPI widgets on custom dashboards change colors when a configurable threshold is crossed.
• Associating user defined attributes for a particular token to APM telemetry is possible.

Databases

• We’ve improved the profiler table view based on User Experience feedback.
• One-second granularity has been added to the inspector's sample charts and system metrics.
• We’ve increased the number of advisors and always seeking additional feedback.

Infrastructure

• The Amazon CloudWatch API was augmented to retrieve metric data. Now, the GetMetricData API endpoint is called to retrieve all metrics since the completion of the last polling cycle.

Kubernetes (K8s)

• The Kubernetes network topology has been enhanced to show cluster-level network diagrams of workloads grouped by namespaces.

Hosts/Agents

• Set up hostname option added to the Add Host wizard. Use the option to include a specific UAMS_OVERRIDE_HOSTNAME definition in the installation instructions.
• A new field for hostname override was added in the Overview tab in the Inspector Panel on the Agents page.

Virtualization

• Datastore-to-cluster relationships are now supported.
• Widgets display relationships between virtualization entities and virtual datastores.
• All available related entities are shown in widgets where applicable.

Platform

• Configuration from Hybrid Cloud Observability or Network Collector network devices can be listed, diffed, and viewed in SolarWinds Observability.
• Users can duplicate a dashboard directly from the specific dashboard page, in addition to the list view.
• A toggle in Settings->Saved Searches has been added to filter searches saved by the user
• The most important metrics related to entities (listed in entity types schemas) can now be displayed, even if they don’t have data.
• Renamed “Home” to “Overview.” – Thanks to our Usabili-buddies who provided this feedback!
• UI improvements to the Events Explorer.
• Added vertical lines to denote the start and end of a maintenance window (see below) in the entity view.
• Alert Templates
  • Extension to alerting feature allowing users to create alerts directly from OOTB templates created by feature teams.
• Maintenance windows
  • The feature that allows users to mute alert notifications during scheduled time frames in order to minimalize alert noise during maintenance of user infrastructure.
• General Alerting
  • Webhook improvement, allowing users to get information about egress IPs.
  •  SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) improvement, allowing users to close an alert on the Service Desk side automatically when the same alert becomes non-active in SolarWinds Observability.

Fixes

• When searching for entities to add to an entity group, clicking Next shows additional search results.
• The Entity Explorer does not time out when listing a large number of entities in a custom time period.
• The Health score always shows the current value for a database that is disconnected and no longer provides metrics.
• The Edit Group wizard refreshes automatically when adding or removing entities from an existing group.

Stay Informed

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Of course, you're encouraged to review the Release Notes to about the latest updates on the SolarWinds Observability solution.

What’s Next?

We’re always looking for new ideas for features and enhancements.  Check out our What We’re Working On (WWWO) post to get an idea of what's on our roadmap. Don’t see what you want on our roadmap?  Why not suggest one in the Feature Requests ?  Vote for your favorite feature requests or create a new one and have fellow THWACKsters vote on it.

We’re very proud of all our customers' feedback, which has helped shape this release. If you’d like to get involved with shaping the future of the product, why not join the User Experience group and add your name to the list of trusted Usabili-buddies?

 — The SolarWinds Observability Team