SAM 6.6.1 Release Notes
Updated February 14, 2019
These release notes describe the new features, improvements, and fixed issues in Server & Application Monitor 6.6.1, an Orion Platform product that consumes Orion Platform 2018.2. These notes also provide information about upgrades and describe workarounds for known issues. See also SAM 6.6.1 system requirements.
For new SAM installations, the SolarWinds Orion Installer already includes Orion Platform 2018.2 Hotfix 5. For existing SAM 6.6.1 installations, Orion Platform 2018.2 Hotfix 2 was released on August 22, 2018. See Orion Platform Hotfixes for details.
New features and improvements
Read this section for descriptions of new features and improvements offered in this release. For previous release information, see SAM Previous Versions. You can also compare this release with previous releases of SAM.
Outgoing connections for Application Dependencies
SAM’s ability to automatically discover the relationships between applications and servers now includes outgoing connections.
- Identify connections between applications and servers, as determined by correlating communications from specific application processes. >> Learn more
- Display Connection Details to visualize the communication-based relationships between applications and servers. Analyze network metrics for latency and packet loss to determine if network communication issues are impacting business-critical applications.
Discover Application Dependencies for IBM® AIX® Power Systems™
Automatically discover the relationships between applications and AIX servers, based on active application communication.
Additional SAM improvements
- SAM now supports up to 100 Additional Polling Engines (APEs) per instance. See Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Orion Products.
- The Application Dependencies feature is disabled when upgrading from earlier versions of SAM to prevent performance issues during upgrades for environments with large quantities of nodes. To restart polling after an upgrade, enable the Application Dependencies feature.
- This release enables SAM to use Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 only — without the need for workarounds — to support organizations that require TLS 1.2-only delivery for security and compliance reasons. See TLS compatibility with Orion Platform products for details.
New features in Orion Platform 2018.2
- Use Orion Maps to display monitored elements and their relationships to quickly identify critical health and performance issues.
- Check the health of your deployment on the Deployment Health page.
- PerfStack™ is available as a widget. Save your Performance Analysis projects and add them to your views as a widget.
- Use the updated SolarWinds Orion Installer with improved scalability engine installation.
New customer installation
Use the SolarWinds Orion Installer, available in the Customer Portal, to install SAM. After installation, refer to the SAM Getting Started Guide to learn about configuring and customizing SAM.
Before you upgrade
If upgrading from a previous version of SAM, be aware of the following considerations:
- To ensure a smooth upgrade, do the following:
- Use the SolarWinds Orion Installer, available in the Customer Portal, to direct your upgrade path and run preflight environment checks.
- Make sure all servers comply with the SAM 6.6.1 System Requirements.
- Read these Release Notes.
- Back up any custom code, such as changed SolarWinds .css files or added .js files. >> Learn More
- Starting in SAM 6.6.1, the Application Dependencies feature is disabled when upgrading from an earlier version of SAM to prevent performance issues during upgrades for environments with large quantities of nodes. To start Application Dependency polling after an upgrade, enable the Application Dependencies feature.
- If you added a site binding to a host name in an earlier SAM version, bind the Orion Web Console to a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), as described in this article.
- If you exceed recommended cloud monitoring limits, you may see a 503 Service Unavailable message when adding an Azure account. See this article for a workaround.
- To monitor Exchange Server 2016, install PowerShell 2.0 or later and provide local Administrator rights.
How to upgrade
- Do you need to migrate as part of your upgrade? See the Orion Platform Migration Guide.
- To upgrade SAM and other Orion Platform products, see the Orion Platform Products Installation and Upgrade Guide.
Fixed issues
SAM 6.6.1 fixes the following issues.
| Case Number | Description |
|---|---|
|
00064615 |
When assigning new applications to a node, SAM prompts users to enter required values for custom properties. |
|
00024728 |
An Asset Inventory agent plugin was updated to return polling results for Windows 2003/2008 SP2 machines. |
|
00019879 |
After upgrading from SAM 6.5 to SAM 6.6, AppInsight for SQL monitors connections to Windows authentication without entering an unknown state related to .NET Framework 4.6.1. |
|
00050628 |
Application Availability - Last Month report displays correct months based on queries. |
|
1182159, 00060279, 00066054, 00061238, 00063511 |
An object reference exception was repaired so the Exchange Web Services User Experience monitor can negotiate Exchange websites that use a different TLS version. |
|
1100161 |
The AppInsight for SQL database compatibility level updates automatically after polling. |
|
1178792 |
When migrating from SAM 6.4, high values returned by a Script Monitor no longer impede the database configuration phase. |
|
1184282, 1589783, 1079379, 1352947 |
More statuses were added to the database for the Last Run status in AppInsight for SQL jobs. |
|
00065555 |
The Connection Details page displays accurate packet loss data for incoming TCP connections if remote computers hosting applications listening on a specific port support the following exceptions.
SAM documentation for the Application Dependencies feature was updated to reflect these configuration requirements. |
|
00019879 |
If the Windows Credential option is selected for SQL Server Credentials when editing properties for an AppInsight for SQL Application, SAM respects credential settings and checks for valid Windows Credentials only. Failed SQL logins no longer appear in SQL Server logs when only Windows Credentials are required. |
|
00048926 |
Discovery and polling of Azure VMs was adjusted to resolve issues related to throttling errors, as reflected in the VMwareJobs_[ID].log file: |
|
1100555 |
The Asset Inventory dashboard polls warranty status data for IBM servers that is now stored on a Lenovo website. |
|
1100555 |
Memory spikes no longer occur when the SW job engine starts the SQWJobEngineWorker2x64 worker process to monitor AppInsight for IIS with an agent. |
|
00081278 |
Polling logic recognizes virtual machines with identical names in different resource groups for an Azure subscription. |
|
00083713 |
The Asset Inventory tab displays correct Warranty Status for HP servers.. |
See also Orion Platform 2018.2 Release Notes.
End of life
See the End of Life Policy for details about life cycles for SolarWinds products.
| EoL Annoucements | EoE Effective Dates | EoL Effective Dates |
|---|---|---|
|
April 6, 2018 End-of-Life (EoL) announcement – Customers on SAM 6.3 should begin transitioning to the latest version of SAM. |
June 6, 2018 End-of-Engineering (EoE) – Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for SAM 6.3 will no longer be actively supported by SolarWinds. |
June 6, 2020 End-of-Life (EoL) – SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for SAM 6.3. |
See Currently supported software versions for more information.
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