We’re excited to announce general availability for version 2023.1 of the SolarWinds® Platform, SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, and the Network and Infrastructure modules. Version 2023.1 is now available for all customers under maintenance, so log in to your customer portal to download it.  Want to see everything new? Check out the release notes.

New Cloud Discovery

For Hybrid Cloud Observability, we’ve expanded the functionality of the cloud discovery wizard and refreshed the UI elements in the wizard. Based on numerous requests from customers, we’ve revamped the cloud discovery wizard so it provides customers with the granularity and simplicity they need to quickly add Azure and AWS cloud environments to the monitoring platform. You can now select specific geographical regions within the cloud provider, and we’ve improved the process for selecting services to monitor as well as individual instances within the selected service. We’ve also updated the APIs we target to communicate with both AWS and Azure to ensure we’re leveraging the most up-to-date and secure versions available from the provider.  Take a deeper dive with James on the improved discovery: 

cloud discovery improvements phase one 

For a broader overview of where we’re taking cloud monitoring in Hybrid Cloud Observability, click here: 

next for cloud support in hybrid cloud observability 

AIOps

In this release, we’ve added an entirely new feature and improved another.

Our anomaly-based alerting feature for Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced customers released in 2022.4 has added functionality to assist users in understanding why something is anomalous or not. When drilling into an anomaly-based alert from the summary view, users can now click the time series to understand the normal operating range (NOR) and metric value for that time period. A side panel opens and gives detail per metric contained in the alert. We’re calling this “Explainability”—we want to give our users as much detail as possible so they can fully understand the results of anomaly detection.

The newest addition to our AIOps arsenal is a feature called AlertStack. This is available for both module and Hybrid Cloud Observability customers. It’s an event and alert clustering tool, and it creates groups of alerts and Network Configuration Manager (NCM)/Server Configuration Monitor (SCM) events. These groups are called alert clusters. AlertStack uses SolarWinds Platform topology data to understand relationships and packages all associated events/alerts into single issues to help with noise reduction. Using the time series, users can go back in time to get deeper insights into the probable root cause. This feature must be enabled in the settings, and once it’s turned on, it automatically creates clusters when two or more associated alerts are triggered. More information in this post: 

don t have your head in the clouds enable alertstack 

Platform Connect

Available as part of Hybrid Cloud Observability only, Platform Connect has been improved to provide better onboarding, management capabilities, and control over the data sent to the SolarWinds Platform.

What is Platform Connect, I hear you say? For those who may have missed it, Platform Connect allows you to connect your Hybrid Cloud Observability deployment to the SolarWinds Observability software as a service (SaaS) solution. Don’t have an account on our SaaS solution? No problem—Platform Connect can create an account for you.

There are two scenarios in which you may want to use Platform Connect:

1. Visualize your network nodes, metrics, and flow data as part of network observability in SolarWinds Observability. If you’re considering a move to a SaaS solution, this is for you! Accelerate your migration by streaming your node data to the cloud.
2. Stream specific “golden metrics” for supported entities to SolarWinds Observability to create anomaly-based alerts. You can learn more here: 
   anomaly based alerts in hybrid cloud observability release candidate 2022 4 

Both options require installing the SolarWinds Observability agent. Platform Connect simplifies this process for you.

Entitlement for AIOps Anomaly-Based Alerts

Anomaly-based alerts is a feature of Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced only. No additional subscription is required in SolarWinds Observability to use this feature.

What’s Changed?

Onboarding Improvements

• Removed the restriction on evaluation licenses
• Creation of tenant on a preferred cloud provider
• API token validation validates the token against the selected cloud provider

Data Control

• Selectively choose to send data for AIOps, network node data and flow data, or a valid combination of these.

Management of Platform Connect

• Uninstall the SolarWinds Observability agent
• Edit the token used by the connection

Improved VeloCloud Support

With the introduction of VeloCloud SD-WAN support in version 2022.4, users can enable SD-WAN monitoring on VeloCloud orchestrators to view data on the orchestrators and associated VeloCloud edge devices.

In this release, for Hybrid Cloud Observability (as well as modules and bundles), we’ve improved the VeloCloud SD-WAN monitoring capabilities.

• View of the tunnels' communication status and link visibility
• VeloCloud SD-WAN network topology to visualize the connections between the Orchestrator and the edge devices
• Details of virtual local area networks (VLANs) for specifications of network segmentation on edge node devices
• Visibility on high availability warm spare configuration with its peer and status

More Features and Improvements

We continue to invest in improving the SolarWinds Platform and our products by adding the features and device support our customers ask for. These features are available for specific modules and Hybrid Cloud Observability:

• Improved Installs and Upgrades: Upgrade speed has been improved and upgrades simplified.
• RPM/DEB signing of Orion® Linux Agent: GPG key is available when installing the Linux Agent through repository.
• Kerberos Authentication for WMI: Force Kerberos authentication for WMI monitoring (excluding Hyper-V). See this document for more information.
• Improved Automation: Calls to management functions (power down VM, etc.) in virtualization environments can now be made via new verbs in the platform SDK.
• Improved Infinidat Support: Performance data from Infinidat arrays now uses the Live Counters API.
• Security and Bug Fixes: See the release notes for the SolarWinds Platform and each product for more details.

Security Always

We focus on securely coding, building, and delivering software to you, as we shared in our blog post, SolarWinds Aims to Set New Standard in Software Development With Next-Generation Build System. The choices we made in forging the SolarWinds Platform align with our Secure by Design philosophy, enhancing our ability to execute this vision now and in the future.

How to Download

The 2023.1 release is fully tested and supported and is ready for you to install on a new server or update your current one.

• For all current Hybrid Cloud Observability customers, the release is available now. You can log in to your customer portal and download it.
• For all current module and bundle customers,  the release is available now. You can log in to your customer portal and check to see if it’s available for download.
• If you don’t own Hybrid Cloud Observability but would like to try it or one of its new features, there are a couple of options for you:
  • Download a 30-day free trial and install it on a new server
  • If you’re a current module or bundle customer, upgrade to 2023.1 first and use the new instant evaluation feature to try Hybrid Cloud Observability for 30 days with only a click of a button. And don’t worry; you can switch back to your modules anytime

What’s Next?

The 2023.1 release of the platform and products is another step forward, but we aren’t done yet. Check out our What We’re Working On post for what’s coming next for the SolarWinds Platform and products.

—The Hybrid Cloud Observability Team