Feature Release: May 2024 Summary

KMSigma.SWI 4 months ago 4 minute read time

Spring (in the northern hemisphere) is truly underway and like flowers emerging from the soil, new features have been rolling into SolarWinds Observability. This month, we’re switching up the format of the release summary announcement to provide quicker access to the data you need. Thanks to everyone who’s provided feedback on enhancing this post about enhancements.

Overview

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.

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)

The SolarWinds Observability reporting feature includes three DEM out-of-the-box reports: the Website: HTTP & HTTPS availability report, the DEM Entities Configuration report, and the URI: TCP & Ping availability report.
When you select the HTTPS protocol on the Availability Monitoring screen of the Add Website wizard, you have an option to allow insecure renegotiation. Enabling the option helps you identify an insecure connection with a database, since SSL tests may start failing.
Allowing insecure SSL renegotiation introduces a security risk in the communication process. Checking this option could lead to exposing to unauthorized entities and possibility of unauthorized access, interception, or manipulation of sensitive data, compromising the integrity and security of the communication channel.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

When viewing Service entities within the Entity Explorer, you can sort them by any column in ascending and descending directions. In addition to the other columns, the Requests, Requests Rate, Response Time, and Error Ratio columns are now sortable.

Databases

You can create alerts on database events from the Alerts tab, enabling more effective monitoring and visibility.
When you add the Queries Profiler datasets on the Inspector tab and click a query name from the table, you are redirected to the Query details page.
On the Databases Overview, you can edit the display name of any database instance in the Database Instances widget by clicking the vertical ellipsis on the top-right.
In the agent configuration section of the Add Data wizard, a tooltip is added to suggest the location for your configuration file.

Network Devices

See device configurations and compare them to identify added, removed, or changed lines.
BGP data was added to NetPath Paths. You can see BGP data for public nodes along the critical service delivery path.
Virtualization entity relationships for datastores and hosts/VMs with problems were added.
Reports: Reports on network, hosts, NetFlow, software, and hardware health were added.

Infrastructure (Hosts)

Support for CentOS 6 added per customer request
Plugin auto-update in containers was disabled
Support for ARM architecture was added

Infrastructure (Virtualization)

Virtualization datastore relationships were enhanced to show virtual clusters, virtual hosts, and virtual machines connections.
New widgets for virtual cluster and virtual host entities show related Virtual Hosts with problems and Guests with problems, respectively.

Logs

Users can review logging data by using REST API.

Explorers/Analyzers

The left pane offers a comprehensive reporting feature, allowing users to analyze system and application performance and behavior and take proactive measures to address issues.
Review the out-of-the-box reports for infrastructure, network, or DEM. Network and infrastructure reports display data collected by a Network Collector or cloud-connected Hybrid Cloud Observability. Click a report to preview the data or click Export to CSV to download the report for audit purposes or other operations.
The gauge widget's range is now configurable.
Widget configuration has been expanded to handle metrics without data and to allow for the selection of Metrics by Entity Type
The metadata pane has been improved to be consistent and easier to read.
The dashboard creation now includes a widget tray with various configurable widgets.

General/Platform

When attempting to delete a notification that is linked to an alert, a pop-up appears, listing the related alert definitions.
Log alert notifications now include a timestamp, hostname, and app name, to align with Papertrail.
In the alert creation wizard, users can choose whether notifications are to be aggregated or not.

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