We’re excited to announce general availability for version 2023.2 of the SolarWinds® Platform, SolarWinds® Hybrid Cloud Observability, and the Network and Systems modules. Version 2023.2 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.

Improved Cloud Discovery and Monitoring

For Hybrid Cloud Observability, we’ve made several improvements to cloud discovery and monitoring:

First, we have added the ability to filter what you monitor in the cloud based on the tags you have already configured on the cloud during initial onboarding. We know that customers rely heavily on those tags, and using them to filter what they want the platform to monitor is a no-brainer. In this release, the tag filtering will only support VMs and their attached volumes as well as DNS zones.

Next, we have added some feature parity in the world of cloud networking. In previous versions we added support for VNets, site-to-site connections and virtual gateways running on Azure. With this release we are now adding support for those objects running on AWS.

Finally, we have improved the way we store and display the subnets associated with cloud instances. You will now see all associated subnets displayed when hovering over an instance, and subnets are now used as a grouping and filtering option so you can more easily drill into specific groups of resources.

Status Only Nodes

For Hybrid Cloud Observability, we want customers to observe their environment in its entirety, including things that might need only an up/down status. In this release, we’ve added the ability to monitor “status only” nodes without consuming a node license. For this release, “status only” means adding an external node or ICMP node, without any additional monitoring – when you add additional polling (a component, template, API template, etc.), the node is promoted to a licensed node.

Once you upgrade to version 2023.2, you can run the new report Node License Summary and see how many nodes are “status only” nodes (ICMP/External without additional polling).

AIOps

For Hybrid Cloud Observability, we’ve added server node metrics to anomaly-based alerts. The specific metrics added for server nodes are: CPU, memory, packet loss, and response time. There have also been numerous UI improvements to both our alert clustering solution – AlertStack, and our anomaly-based alerting.

Improved Credential Management API

As part for our continued efforts to allow users to build out automation use cases and create integrations with PAM solutions, we have added additional credential types that can be managed via the Common Credentials Management API (available in 2022.4 onwards) which includes the following SWIS verbs:

• Orion.Credential.CreateCredentials
• Orion.Credential.UpdateCredentials

2023.2 Introduces additional credential types that can be managed with these verbs.
https://github.com/solarwinds/OrionSDK/wiki/Credential-Management

2023.2 Includes other changes under the hood to allow for better certificate management.

• Remote Certificate validation has been improved for F5, Meraki/VeloCloud, and Cloud Monitoring.
• Job Engine / Collector uses per-server certificate for SDF data encryption.
• Credentials encryption is de-coupled from the Orion certificate.
• Minor edit to the Add Agent Wizard to link to
  https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/orionplatform/content/core-certificates-and-the-agent-sw395.htm 

Securing Alerting Actions

Starting with 2023.2 the use of the execute external program alerting action needs to be approved by an administrator. Users who are upgrading to 2023.2 are not affected and existing alert actions of this type will be marked as approved during upgrade. This setting can be turned off globally if required.

Device View Integration

To visually display interface status and utilization over a physical device layout, Device View was introduced in SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor in version 2019.4. Over the subsequent releases, we added support for multivendor series switches and switch stacks, filtering by status and VLAN and usability improvements on Interface Side-panel.

With the release of 2023.2, Device View displays any Universal Device Tracker information that's pertinent to the interface, including CDP and LLDP neighbors, connected users, and devices.

This is available for customers who own Hybrid Cloud Observability, SolarWinds® Network Automation Manager, or Network Performance Monitor and SolarWinds® Universal Device Tracker.

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:

• Agent – Support for RHEL 9.0: The agent now supports RHEL 9.0 on all products.
• VoIP and Network Quality Manager (VNQM): Support for CUCM v14.
• Improved NetApp Support: Data from NetApp arrays now uses the AIQUM NetApp API. For Storage Resource Manager only.
• Web Performance Monitor: Updated to Chromium 108.0.5359.179 and Electron 22.1.0.
• 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 2023.2 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 2023.2 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 2023.2 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