2022 Platform Updates

Week of September 12, 2022 (13.0_2022_W36)

Patch Management 2.0 (Early Access)

Why are we doing this?

Our Patch Management module is a flexible, yet strong capability provided as a part of Automation solution on the platform. Based on our customer inputs, we are enhancing the Usability, Visibility and Scalability of the existing Patch Management with the 2.0 release.

What’s going to change?

The entire Patch Management module under Automation section, going to get a new, enhanced UI with few enhanced functionalities. But the Patch activity concept and capability remains the same. This would be the first enhancements release with more pipelined Patch capability enhancements.

Major enhancements:

• Advanced and Dynamic patching capabilities with simple and strong OpsQL.
• One stop solution added for Patching related configurations.
• Patch Overview Status page and New UI.
• Enhanced Scheduling and Installation options.

To explore the features of Patch Management 2.0, navigate to Automation > Patch Management 2.0 in the OpsRamp portal.

The following table demonstrates the differences between existing Patch Management and Patch Management 2.0 in order to understand the major enhancements in terms of all features.

Early access to Patch Management 2.0

Patch Management 2.0 is available for the selected customers with the “Early Access” label. The Early Access label indicates that there are no known limitations and that the product is fully functional. Patch Management 2.0 features are available for use and exploration for all users. However, because we are not fully prepared for support, we will not be able to give full support at the moment.

See Patch Management 2.0 for more details.

Reporting Apps (Early Access)

Reporting Apps are the next-generation custom report framework. It has the same purpose as a custom report, but it offers more flexibility. Users can see the “Reporting Apps” feature under the Reports tab. The following applications are currently listed under the Reporting Apps:

• Asset Insights
• Metered usage Insights
• Software Inventory
• Asset Inventory
• Remote Control Usage
• OPS 360 for Patching

The following are the key features of Reporting Apps:

• Reporting Apps give users the ability to run analytics on their IT environment.
• Users can see a breakdown of their IT assets by resource type and a server distribution based on utilization.
• Reports from Analytics: Apps are now available in PDF and XLSX formats.
• When installed, you can perform one or more analysis on each app and perform one or more analysis. That means one or more runs are associated with that analysis.
• Each analysis can apply a set of parameters and analyze the data.

Early access to Reporting Apps

Reporting Apps is available for the selected customers with the “Early Access” label. The Early Access label indicates that there are no known limitations and that the product is fully functional. Reporting Apps features are available for use and exploration for all users. However, because we are not fully prepared for support, we will not be able to give full support at the moment.

See Reporting Apps for more details.

Core platform enhancements

Included resources link in the gateway offline alert

It has been identified that if any resource goes to an unknown state, users are not notified. So now, we made improvements to identify which resources are affected when a gateway goes offline.

As part of the existing gateway offline alert, a link will be provided to the user in the alert. When you click the link, it will show all the gateway-managed resources that will be impacted. This will help in identifying the resources with UNKNOWN state managed by a gateway.

UI enhancements

Infrastructure Search

The Infrastructure Search for public cloud resources will show a higher count compared to the classic UI, and this is expected by definition.

Examples:

• Classic UI does not show the nodes of a cluster in the top-level view. They are only shown under the cluster. In the Infrastructure Search, by definition, it is included in the total count.

• EventBridge Bus -> EventBridge Rules
  The Rules in the Infrastructure Search are shown under the category, whereas the Rules in the classic UI are shown under the respective Bus.

Single flow installation

The single flow is used to install OpsRamp Gateway applications in various IT environments, whether it is an independent installation or part of an SDK installation. Streamlined the user interface flow to install the OpsRamp Gateway application. The user will be able to install any flavor of the Gateway by following the installation instructions.

See Gateway Profiles for more details.

Alert browser

The new alert browser now includes a column to show Elapsed Time, it helps users to know from how long the alert has been active.

Inference and correlated alert indicator

Support for “De-Correlate” alerts is now available on the new Alerts browser. The indicators for inference and correlated alerts are available now.

New user interface for managing integrations

We have introduced a brand new user Interface for managing integrations and that is directly accessible from the Setup menu. This will be a common integration page for both auto-monitoring and template based clients.

See Managing Integrations for more details.

Tenancy and RBAC enhancements

Password reset after admin password change

When an administrator updates a user’s credentials, that particular user has to mandatorily reset their password in the next login attempt.

See Password Reset for more details.

Dashboard 2.0 enhancements

Support dashboard variable in OpsQL based tiles

We now support the ability to use dashboard variables in Resource and Alert tiles. Dashboard variables are created to assign specific attributes. These are used to filter the data with different attributes, without creating a new tile every time a change is required.

Metric widget creation - Basic Version

Users can now create metric widgets using a simple dropdown-based approach. Users are no longer required to learn a query language to graph their resources or alerts.

See Create a Metric Tile for more details.

OpsQL Resource/Alert Widget - Basic Version

Users can now create resource and alert widgets using a simple dropdown-based approach. Users no longer required to learn a query language to graph their resources or alerts.

See Create an Alert Tile for more details.

Legend icon placement changed

The legend now appears in a dropdown when selecting the “Legend” icon.

Time frame can be changed to see data in preview graph

You can now change the time frame of the preview graph, when editing a widget at the top right.

Cloud monitoring enhancements

Resource support for Google cloud interconnect

As per policy, OpsRamp now discovers the new resource type Google cloud interconnect in addition to the existing resource types during Google discovery.

See Google Interconnect for more details.

Monitoring support for LB’s TargetGroups

As per policy, Opsramp now discovers new resource type target groups in addition to the existing resource types during AWS discovery.

See AWS Target Group for more details.

Support for Azure PostgresQL flexible servers

As per policy, Opsramp now discovers a new resource type PostgreSQL flexible server in addition to the existing resource types during Azure discovery.

See Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server for more details.

Monitoring management enhancements

Ability to update monitor frequency at the template level

With this enhancements, the frequency can be selected from the list of predefined values. The previous workaround of reading the same monitor with different frequencies is no longer required. You can now update the frequency without reading it.

Alert management enhancements

Filter alerts by selecting parent site

Users can now filter alerts with parent (top level) site names of the resource.

Alert correlation policies updated

In correlation policies, when the user selects the Observed mode, an additional checkbox Review for last 7 days results” is displayed.

See View Reviewed Inferences and its Correlated Alerts for more details.

First response and alert escalation policies

The users can edit the Input and Output column attributes of an uploaded CSV file in the UI itself. Also, using Configure option, a user can create new training file in the UI itself.

Correlate alerts from the maintenance windows

In the schedule maintenance window, an option provided to the user to correlate all open alerts that are in the critical and warning states into a single inference at the end of each schedule maintenance window.

See Create a Schedule Maintenance Window for more details.

First Response Policy

In the First Response policy, an additional Roster native attribute has been added (for both Partner level and Client level policies) to help users in executing actions that are mentioned in the policy definition (either suppress, snooze or run a process automation) only when Roster is Active or Inactive."

See Create a Client-level First Response Policy for more details.

“Notification Roster” field in the ticket

Users can select the roster in the Notification Roster field in the ticket, so that the ticket-related notifications will be sent based on the shift schedule in the Roster.so that the ticket-related notifications is sent to a group of users who are working in the selected shift.

Reports enhancements

Gateway profile details in the Agent inventory report

The agent inventory report now includes support for displaying gateway details (proxy). The report will now include the gateway IP address and gateway management profile name for agents connecting via Gateway proxy. This report can assist you in identifying how many agents are connecting through a specific gateway.

Previously, the Agents inventory report only showed whether the agent was connected directly or via proxy, with no gateway information.

Agent enhancements

Application dashboards data will be disabled

Agent version 13.0.0 onwards, due to security reasons by default application dashboards data will be disabled and not sent. Option is provided to enable/disable application dashboards based on user choice.

Support for Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux

From v13.0 agent releases, Agent now supports Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux Distributions.

Patching alerts to carry patch configuration name

Patch configuration name and UUID are included in patch management alerts to track which job has been initiated.

API updates

API documentation site updates

• APIs that have been deprecated are exclusively identified by a Red color coded dot.

  

• API listing after selecting each feature.

  

• Dropdown allows for efficient real-estate=space usage for request and response payloads.

  

• Listing of HTTP response codes for each endpoint with color code.

  

• Nested schema with modified icon.

  

New APIs

• Syslog APIs to create and import/export Syslog profiles.
• Clone Template API endpoint to clone a given template with the new thresholds.
• Included resource level and component level threshold details in “Get assigned templates of resource” API.
• Added API support to get nodes mapped at the cluster level.
• New API endpoint to enable agent auto-updates on resources.

Updated APIs

• Tenant API has been updated to enable remote console during the client creation.
• Ticketing API with time-bound type will not support Console configurations.
• Schedule maintenance API has been updated to support Alert correlation during maintenance.

End of Life API Endpoints

• Duplicate VPCId attribute from resource schema has been removed from the resource management APIs.

Week of August 8, 2022 (2022_W32)

UI enhancements:

Infrastructure search

The following new operators are now supported as part of OpsQL to query data:

• Contains
• Not Contains
• Starts With
• Not Starts With
• Ends With
• Not Ends With

See Infrastructure Search for more details.

Home Tab

A new Home tab has been added to the Infrastructure > Search page.
The Home tab that contains the RESOURCE OVERVIEW categories and resources is displayed when you navigate to the search page.

• The home tab is the default view that is displayed when you navigate to the search page at the client-level. It is not available at the partner-level.
  
• If the user has set a default view, it will be displayed on the search page.
  

See Resource Overview for more details.

Resources

The Resource overview page now displays the resources discovered by a specific app or integration. This option is only available at the client level.

See Resource Overview for more details.

Related Resources tab

A new RELATED RESOURCES tab has been added to display the list of related resources for a particular resource in the slide-out screen.
For the resources to be related to each other, they should meet one of the following conditions:

• runsOn: Indicates that a resource is running on another resource. For example, an application that is running on a server that is in the process of getting discovered.
• connectedTo: Indicates that a resource is connected to another resource. For example, a port that is connected to a switch.
• dependsOn: Indicates that one resource needs another resource to exist. For example, an ESXi host cannot exist without a vCenter.
• componentOf: Indicates that one resource is a component of a group of resources. For example, a number of VMs that belong to a cluster. Each VM is a component of the cluster.
  

For the resources to be displayed, the Native Type attribute should be defined and the resources should be related to a main resource.

See Related Resources for more details.

Cloud Monitoring enhancements:

Saas Applications

The UI navigation for SaaS Applications in the Infrastructure tab has changed.
Previously, all SaaS applications were grouped under one category but from now, each application will have a separate category.
For example, zoom integrations is one category and AWS integrations is another category.

Cloud Integrations

OpsRamp now integrates with the latest versions of AWS, Azure, Google, and Alibaba cloud provider APIs.

Metric and Resource Health alerts ingestion

We are now supporting the ingestion of Metric and Resource Health alerts from Azure into OpsRamp using a common alert schema via EventHub.

See Azure Alert Rules for more details.

Cloud Native Monitoring enhancements:

We have updated the RBAC policies in the Agent Deployment YAML file for Kubernetes cluster. The minimum access given is required for cluster discovery and monitoring, and also for agent updates to the latest version.

Remote Consoles enhancements:

User Info

The remote consoles now display the information of the user that has launched a browser console.

• If it is an RDP console, a user icon and the user name are displayed.

  

• If it is an SSH console, a user icon and the number of user(s) are displayed.

  

See Launch consoles from the Infrastructure page for more details.

Dashboard enhancements:

Dashboard 2.0

A new curated dashboard called Alert Statistics is now available as part of pre-defined dashboards in Dashboard 2.0 version. It displays the summary of alerts.

Topology

The topology map UI support has now been added for the SDK adapter resources. The Resource UUID option has also been added to the UI filter. The filter facilitates the topology map for the SDK adapter with the resource UUID that has been provided.

See Resource UUID for more details.

Process Automation enhancements:

Users can now receive notifications for a failed or suspended task on a process definition through an email. The notifications will be sent to the subscribed emails at the process level, and support external email IDs also.
The users can configure the following parameters:

• When Stuck/When Failed - time when the task got stuck or failed, or time to wait before triggering an email
• Notify Frequency
• Notify Users
• CC Users

  

See Enable and Disable the Notify toggle for more details.

Reports enhancements:

A new field called the Component has been added to the Alerts reports.

Alert Management enhancements:

The data in the Seasonal Groups field in the Alert Prediction tab is now sorted alphabetically.

Password Management Integration enhancements:

OpsRamp now supports integration with the Hashicorp password vault. The users can launch remote consoles into a machine using their credentials from the Hashicorp vault.

This integration is currently limited to remote console launch.

Week of July 11, 2022 (2022_W27)

Infrastructure Search

Infrastructure advanced search is updated to use OpsQL syntax. The $ in the expression is no longer required.

For more information on Infrastructure search, click here.

Dashboard 2.0 enhancements:

Drill down capabilities from OpsQL tiles

Metric tile - Click on any of the items in the legend or tile to be redirected to the resource details page related to the metric clicked on.
Resource tile - Click on any of the items in the legend or tile to see a list of the resources from that exact time frame and with the same set of tags as the widget clicked on.
Alert tile - Click on any of the items in the legend or tile to see a list of the alerts from that exact time frame and with the same set of tags as the widget clicked on.

Metric tile:

Alert tile:

Resource tile:

Partner Level Support for Dashboard 2.0

Dashboard 2.0 is now available at the partner level context.

Alert Time Range Selection

Users are now given the choice to visualize alerts based on when they were created vs. updated.

Multi Column List

Users can now visualize resources/alerts as split out into sub-groups in the list visualization when choosing more than one Group By tag.

See Introduction to tiles for more details.

Enable Edit Shared dashboard for Client/Partner Administrator

Shared dashboards can now be edited by admin users.
The users can now edit, remove, and rename the Tiles and Dashboards.
Criteria:

• The user has created the dashboard
• The dashboard has been shared with the user and the user has administrator privileges

Integration enhancements:

Alerts webhook integration supports taking device serial number

Support is provided to map resource serial number via integration mapping section. This will map only when the resource is new and did not exist in OpsRamp earlier.

Discovery enhancements:

Discovery Policy support for Meraki and Cradlepoint

Today Meraki and Cradle Point integrations, once onboarded, will discover all supported resources.
Now extended options are available to user to filter the resources that have to be discovered.

Cloud/SaaS monitoring enhancements:

OAuth authentication for Zoom App monitoring

Zoom Integration is updated to support OAuth authentication for discovery and monitoring.

GCP Cloud Billing support

Added support for consuming google cloud billing data through big query data set instead of Storage Account which is being deprecated by Google.

Public cloud discovery enhancements

A new interface is now available for managing integrations.

Agent enhancements

Agent self monitoring improvement

Now you can configure the Agent’s self-monitoring frequency. You can select from 1, 2, 3, 6, and 12 hours options. Earlier, the default time was set to 6 hours.

To provide notification when there is a change in the availability of agent-monitored metrics, the agent self-monitoring feature generates alerts when agent-monitored metrics are interrupted and, again, when metric monitoring is restored.

See Enable Agent Self-Monitoring for more details.

Alert Management enhancements

First Response policy – Alert status as suppressed for Alert Stream exports

Now First Response suppressed alerts will also participate in alert streaming with their status.

New UI and improvements on Alert Correlation ML views and CSV file

Now, detected sequence page will show the sequence of the metrics that will correlate. You can also provide input sequence from the UI itself instead of giving it in a CSV file and upload. Also, provided option to Learn/Unlearn. If you do not want to correlate particular sequence that is detected by Machine Learning, you can make that pattern as “Unlearn” from UI so that new alerts that match that pattern will not get correlated.

UI parity between “dns name” and “name”

Given DNS name filter support in all alert policies and also in the training file of Alert First Response and Alert Escalation.

Append alerts to existing open incident

Additional option is given in incident settings, “Attach existing open incident to new alert”, if the previous alert has incident created and that incident is in open state. Enabling this option will append that incident to the new alert instead of creating new incident.

Week of June 14, 2022 (2022_W23)

APIs to manage streaming alert exports

New APIs are now available to manage streaming alert export configurations. See the API documentation page to learn more about the export configurations.

Metrics descriptions for custom monitors

Custom monitors with metrics with enumerated values and associated descriptions are now displayed in graphs.

Escalation policies improvements

You can now define escalation policies for alerts on service maps based on custom attributes.

1. Create/Assign Custom attributes to Service Map

   

2. Selecting the Custom attribute Token in Escalation Policy

   

3. Created incident from escalation policy on service map with its custom attribute value

   

Template configuration usability improvements

Monitoring and metric template configuration table sizes can now be expanded to show more metric rows without requiring scrolling.

Permissions to create scheduled maintenance on resource groups and sites

Any user with Scheduled Maintenance Manage permission can now create scheduled maintenance windows at the site and the group level, even though the user does not have the Device Manage permission.

Availability on network interfaces based on operational status

You can now monitor the availability of a network interface based on the operational status of the interface. The topology map now also shows the availability status of the interface.

In-use visual indicator on remote console

You can now see if a remote console is in use in the console listing page. See the Launch Browser Consoles page to learn more about the browser console options.

Patch jobs comply with maintenance window

Patching jobs now enforce that all jobs are active only within the scheduled patching window. All patching jobs that have not yet started and have not initiated patch installation are suspended if the maintenance window has ended.

Improvements to Service Desk

You can now attach tasks to service requests.

Upcoming changes for week 27, 2022 (2022_W27)

The following changes will be available, starting from week 27, 2022:

Accessing Meraki and CradlePoint resources from Infrastructure

There will be a change in accessing Meraki and CradlePoint resources. They will be accessed from the Infrastructure > Resources tab.
Select the Meraki and CradlePoint integrations from the left navigation on the Resources page and expand to view the attributes.

GCP Cloud Billing support

The GCP cloud billing support will be added to support Google cloud billing data through a big query data set.
The big query data set will replace the Storage Account, which is being deprecated by Google.
Putting billing information into storage accounts is already in action for all the latest accounts.
So, Opsramp updated the Cost information collection support through the big query data set, as recommended by Google, and hence, deprecating from storage account.
See https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/export-data-bigquery for more information.

Oauth authentication for Zoom App monitoring

Zoom Integration is updated to support oauth authentication for discovery and monitoring, which is a standard followed. The JWT token authentication is going to be deprecated in week 27, and only oauth based Zoom apps will be supported.

Week of May 2, 2022 (12.0_2022_W17)

Monitor Kubernetes namespaces

You can now customize the Kubernetes namespace on which the OpsRamp agent is deployed, in a Kubernetes cluster. You can specify a custom namespace in the agent deployment configuration file for Kubernetes. Prior to this release, the OpsRamp agent could only be deployed in an OpsRamp defined namespace.

End-of-Life OS versions no longer supported by OpsRamp agent

As announced earlier (see deprecation notice), starting agent version 12.0.0, the OpsRamp agent will not support on the following OS versions:

• Fedora Linux versions 30.X and prior versions.
• Oracle Linux versions 5.X and prior versions.
• Red Hat Linux versions 5.X and prior versions.
• Prior versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11.x.

Agent-based monitors re-trigger alerts every 6 hours

Agent-based monitors now re-trigger alerts every 6 hours, even if the original alert’s state has not changed. This is to ensure that alertable conditions that persist on managed resources are brought to the user’s attention again.

File integrity checks on agent-based custom monitor scripts and runbook scripts

OpsRamp agents now perform file integrity checks on custom monitor scripts and runbook automation scripts prior to running them. This enhances security by ensuring that scripts that run on managed resources have not tampered with. If the agent detects a script that has been tampered with, the agent will trigger an alert to notify users.

Week of April 18, 2022 (2022_W14)

Week of March 28, 2022 (2022_W12)

Week of March 7, 2022 (2022_W10)

Week of February 14, 2022 (2022_W7)

Week of January 31, 2022 (2022_W5)

Week of January 6, 2022 (2022_W1)