Fall 2020 Update

Release Date: October 2020

Introduction

We are excited to announce our Fall 2020 update!

This release is heavily focused on our Discovery and Monitoring solution. Our goal is to provide a streamlined monitoring experience for teams looking to gain visibility into Public Cloud and Kubernetes-based applications and workloads.

Discovery and monitoring

Advanced resource search

Advanced search for resources is enhanced to allow the creation of resource groups.

Creating resource groups (using the advanced search query) unlocks the power of OpsRamp’s attribute model. When resource groups are saved, administrators can leverage resource groups in other areas of the platform such as device management policies, dashboards, and escalation policies.

For more information, see:

• Advanced Resource Search

Container orchestration and runtimes

Building off our support for Kubernetes and Docker workloads, support for container orchestrators and runtime is extended to:

• Container Orchestrators:
  • Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Distribution (okd)
  • K3s
• Container Runtimes:
  • Containerd

This extended support ensures that teams deploying their containerized workloads (using various orchestrators and runtimes) have continuous visibility into the health and performance of their resources.

For more information, see:

• Kubernetes Integration
• Kubernetes Metrics

Container-based application detection

With the focus on providing visibility into containerized workloads, OpsRamp is extending the capability of its native container monitoring to support the discovering and monitoring of containerized applications.

Providing visibility into the applications running in containers gives administrators the next level of insight into the services supporting their business applications. Over 25 applications are auto-detectable including Cassandra, MongoDB, MySQL, and Kafka.

Alerts streaming to external webhooks

Administrators can now consume alerts from their tenants using webhook listeners. This is intended for teams that have third-party alert correlation tools and do not want to leverage the native alert correlation functionality or do independent analysis of the alert data. You have the option to stream raw or de-duplicated alerts.

Public cloud improvements

AWS, Azure, and Google integrations are updated with new onboarding and monitoring information.

For more information, see:

• AWS
• Azure
• Google

Public cloud services

AWS, Azure, and Google integrations are updated with supported services along with their respective metrics.

For more information, see:

• AWS
• Azure
• Google

Public cloud resource support

Cloud monitoring services are being extended to support several key services within AWS and Azure.

For AWS:

• AWS ECS

For Azure:

• Azure Functions
• Azure Hyperscale (PostgreSQL)
• Azure SQL Managed Instance

Python-based synthetics

Enhanced Python-based synthetics are available for synthetic transactions which include IF-THEN-ELSE statements.

For more information, see:

• SCRIPT Transaction Steps

Event and incident management

Auto-suggest processes to run

The first response policy includes a new option to automatically learn, suggest, and run process definition workflows. The auto-suggest feature executes on defined alert criteria.

This auto-suggest feature assists you in performing troubleshooting, triage, and remediation tasks.

For more information, see:

• Alert First Response Overview
• Alert Management Training File

Rule-based first response policy

Rule-based First Response policy allows you to configure the actions by alert pattern and attribute actions.

For more information, see:

• Alert First Response Overview
• Alert Management Training File

Outbound payloads automated functional operations

Outbound integration configurations support functional operators on the available token attributes. The following operators automatically extract the content needed for the payloads:

String concat()
String substring()

Date and time option

Your profile has a new option to set the date pattern and time format. You can set the time to be either a 12h or 24h clock and the date can be in either dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy format. The date pattern and time format applies across the platform.

Resource availability status on alert suppression

When creating clients, a new setting is available that allows you to ignore suppressed or incident alerts. Options for this setting includes all, suppress, or incident. With incident, alert actions on resolved and closed incidents are ignored.

For more information, see:

• Managing Clients

Remediation and automation

Process automation

The tasks of creating and managing process definition workflows are improved by increased capabilities.

User task and task management

Process automation developers and users can now include workflow tasks that require human involvement and interaction, such as approvals or manual action. User tasks are made available as Service Desk tasks and show up in the users My Unresolved ticket list. Once the task is resolved, the process continues with the next task in the workflow sequence.

Workflow monitoring

To improve troubleshooting, process automation developers and users can monitor defined workflows in the following ways:

• To see all versions of the process definition.
• To see all instances of each version.
• To locate failed activities in the process definition diagram.
• To examine process variables, process user tasks, async service tasks, and script tasks.

In addition, users can cancel active process instance(s), change process variable values, and retry failed process instances.

For more information, see:

• Getting Started with Process Definition

Copying process definitions

Process automation developers and users can now create copies of existing process definitions.

Process definition copies allow you to quickly:

• Create similar but unique workflows.
• Update workflows that require minor changes.

Find Resources platform service task

A new platform service task gives process automation developers and users the ability to run queries that can find multiple resources. These resources can then be used within their ITOM workflows.

Multi-instance loops

Certain ITOM workflows require processing of multiple resources instead of single ones for service, script, platform, and REST API tasks. You can now do parallel and sequential multi-instance loops of resources within a process definition to achieve the desired outcome.

Patch management

Configure patch installations to align with Patch Tuesday

Patch installations can now be scheduled to trigger within a time window from Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday. Users no longer have to manually adjust the patch configuration to align with Patch Tuesday.

For more information, see:

• Configuring Patch Compliance

Approve patches from patch compliance configuration

You can now approve patches for installation from the baseline in patch compliance configuration. In addition, you can track patch compliance and approve the same patches for installation in one shot.

For more information, see:

• Configuring Patch Compliance

Time zone selection for patching

You can now select a specific time zone to patch all the resources in the patch configuration. Selecting the time zone ignores the different local time zones of resources and instead uses the specified time zone in the patch configuration.

Browser-based remote consoles

Browser-based remote consoles are available that run directly on web browsers and alongside Java consoles.

Browser-based consoles support the following capabilities:

• Console protocols: RDP, SSH, Telnet
• File transfer using SSH consoles
• Audit record and play.

For more information, see:

• Launching Browser Consoles

Java-based remote consoles are now deprecated and will not be available in future releases. See Deprecation Notices for more information.

Reports

Reports asynchronous generation and scalability improvements

For NFS storage, a metadata cache is maintained for each report for a given time period. For example: previous month, previous week, previous day, and a specific period.

This change reduces report re-generation in case of failure or on-demand time by up to 90%.

UI enhancements

UI tours

The UI includes feature tours that educate you about new features. These tours either take you through the steps of a process or highlight a feature with a short description.

APIs

Agent APIs

New agent APIs are available for retrieving and updating installed agent resources.

GET https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/{agentversion}/resourcesCountByAgentVersion
GET https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/{osName}/resourcesCountByOSName
GET https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/agentInstalled/resources/resourcesCountGroupByAgentVersion
GET https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/agentInstalled/resources/resourcesCountGroupByOSName
GET https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/{agentVersion}/resourceUUIDSByAgentVersion
GET https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/{OSName}/resourceUUIDSByOSName
GET https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/supportedAgentVersions
POST https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/resources/{ResourceUUID}/updateByResourceUUID
POST https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/resources/{agentversion}/updateResourcesByAgentVersion
POST https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/resources/updateResourcesByClientId
POST https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/agents/resources/{osname}/updateResourcesByOSName

Custom branding APIs

New custom branding APIs are available for creating and updating custom client branding information. Custom branding information includes details such as header, header text, logo, favicon, login image, website title, and custom sub-domains.

https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/customBranding

Credential sets APIs

New credential set APIs are available for creating and updating credential set information.

https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/customBranding
https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/credentialSets/{credentialSetId}

Alert API improvements

The alert correlation and first response APIs are enhanced to support more filter criteria.

https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/policies/alertCorrelation
https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/policies/alertCorrelation/{policyId}
https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/policies/firstResponse
https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/policies/firstResponse/{policyId}
https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/escalations
https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/escalations/{id}

Resource API improvements

The GET and UPDATE Resource API is enhanced to be consistent across all public clouds.

The API now provides:

• Provider details for all public cloud resources (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud).
• User ability to update resource descriptions.

https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/resources
https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/resources/{resourceId}

Resource API CollectorType renamed

The collectorType for templates assigned on Synthetic resources monitoring is renamed to Synthetics from Webservice.

https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/client_193/resources/{resource_uuid}/templates?collectorType=Synthetics

Integration API improvements for public cloud

The install integrations API is enhanced to provide discovery information of public clouds. The API provides users the ability to install K3S integrations.

https://{api-url}/api/v2/tenants/{tenantId}/integrations/install/{integrationId}