DPA 2023.2 and 2023.2.1 release notes

Release date: June 5, 2023

Here's what's new in Database Performance Analyzer 2023.2 and 2023.2.1.

Learn more

Get information about the latest hotfixes.
See the DPA system requirements.
For information about working with DPA, see the DPA Administrator Guide.

If you are upgrading from DPA 2023.2 to DPA 2023.2.1 and you have applied one or more buddy drops to DPA 2023.2, be aware that upgrading will remove the fixes made by the buddy drops.

New features and improvements in DPA

Additions to systems requirements and monitored instances

Category	Vendor and version
Repository database	Amazon RDS for MySQL 8.0
Monitored database instances	EDB Postgres 14

For more information, see the DPA 2023.2 system requirements and Database instances DPA can monitor.

Security enhancements

Security enhancements include:

HTTPS connections are now required.

To improve security, DPA 2023.2 and later accepts only HTTPS connections.

If you are upgrading from a previous version and you do not want HTTP connection attempts by users to fail, you can redirect connection attempts that use the HTTP connector port. If DPA Central is configured to access any DPA servers using HTTP, you must update those connection definitions. See Before you upgrade for more information.
The Tomcat driver used by DPA has been upgraded to Tomcat 8.5.85.
The JDBC driver used by DPA has been upgraded to Microsoft JDBC Driver 12.2.0.

Support for SAML authentication with Azure AD as the identity provider

To configure DPA to use SAML authentication with Azure AD as the identity provider, see this topic.

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Fixes

DPA 2023.2.1 includes the following fixes.

Case number	Description
01191341, 01318760, 01335574, 01355108, 01356393	DPA 2023.2.1 generates index advisors and table tuning advisors.
01336437	Issues preventing connections via Azure AD user authentication with Azure SQL Managed Instances (ASMIs) and Azure SQL Database instances integrated with Azure AD have been resolved.

DPA 2023.2 includes the following fixes.

Case number	Description
01206958, 01245439, 01265950	When DPA is monitoring a database instance on a VM with a large number of disks, the vSphere cleaner job runs as expected and cleans VM disk metrics for each granularity (seconds, 10 minutes, hours, days). This job removes old data from the DPA repository database, which prevents the repository from growing at a high rate and consuming excessive space and memory on the repository server.
01190371	Monitoring a Sybase database instance no longer fails with the error `Monitor attempting to start - see log`.
00960237	Monitoring an Oracle database instance no longer fails with the error `Monitor for database [DB_name] failed in job [TextPollJob] due to [Underlying datasource has not been set.]`.
01200056	Configuring an Azure SQL DB repository database no longer fails because of missing properties. DPA automatically adds the required JDBC URL properties in the Advanced Connection Properties dialog box.
01105926, 01183265, 01225013, 01234101, 01241730	Health, connection status, and other data about monitored SQL Server Availability Groups (AGs) is updated as expected in the Availability Group Summary view.
01256667	When you are registering a database instance for monitoring and the `com.confio.ignite.jdbc.sqlserver.useJtdsDriver` property value is set to `true` in the `system.properties` file, DPA honors this setting and uses the jTDS JDBC driver.
01235456	DPA sorts index advisors based on the estimated time savings, listing advisors with the largest estimated savings first.
01235460	DPA index advisors no longer display estimated savings percentages that are greater than 100%. When DPA detects that information from the database vendor is inconsistent, DPA displays 'Unknown'. For more information, see this support article.
01183457, 01191341, 01194479, 01217066, 01311041	DPA index analysis no longer fails with errors such as `Unable to run index analysis` or `Out of range value for column 'CARDINALITY'` in the logs, and it no longer shows no recommendation when the table advisor recommends indexes.
01181748	DPA index analysis recommendations are no longer displayed one day and then missing the next even though the recommended indexes were not created.
01142556, 01166969, 01172735, 01273937	When deadlock alerts occur, DPA lists the deadlocks on the Deadlocks tab.

SolarWinds CVEs

CVE-ID	Vulnerability Title	Description	Severity
CVE-2023-23837	No Exception Handling Vulnerability	No exception handling vulnerability which revealed sensitive or excessive information to users.	Medium
CVE-2023-23838	Directory traversal and file enumeration vulnerability	Directory traversal and file enumeration vulnerability which allowed users to enumerate to different folders of the server.	Medium

Third-party CVEs

SolarWinds would like to thank our Security Researchers below for reporting on the issue in a responsible manner and working with our security, product, and engineering teams to fix the vulnerability.

CVE-ID	Vulnerability Title	Description	Severity
CVE-2020-26870	URL redirection vulnerability	Due to vulnerable Swagger UI version 3.27.0, URL redirection was possible, which can help attackers modify a URL and redirect a user to any other malicious site.	High

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Installation or upgrade

For new installations, you can download the installer from the SolarWinds website or from the Customer Portal. For more information, see the DPA Installation and Upgrade Guide.

For upgrades, use the DPA Installation and Upgrade Guide to help you plan and execute your upgrade. When you are ready, download the upgrade package from the SolarWinds Customer Portal.

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Before you upgrade!

This release includes fixes that might require changes to your DPA deployment. Before you upgrade, determine if you need to make the following changes:

If you want users to be able to access DPA using HTTP (instead of HTTPS), redirect connection attempts that use the HTTP connector port.
If DPA Central is configured to access any DPA servers using HTTP, update the connection definitions.
If you monitor IBM Db2 database instances, DPA 2023.2.1 requires additional privileges to collect information from updated Db2 dictionaries and stored procedures. Update the permissions of the DPA monitoring user for each Db2 instance.

You can make these changes either before or after an upgrade. However, to ensure DPA availability and to avoid any gaps in monitoring Db2 instances, SolarWinds recommends making them before you upgrade.

Redirect connection attempts that use the HTTP connector port

To ensure that DPA is available to users who previously connected over HTTP, update the server.xml file to redirect traffic to the HTTP connector port (8123 by default) to the HTTPS/SSL connector port (8124 by default).

If the redirect is not added and users attempt to connect over HTTP after the upgrade, they will receive a message that the site can't be reached.

Open the following file in a text editor:

DPA-install-dir\iwc\tomcat\conf\server.xml
Locate the Connector property below <!--HTTPS/SSL connector>, and note the port value. (By default, this is 8124.)
Locate the Connector property below <!--HTTP connector>. Within the Connector property, add the following, where hpptsPortNumber is the port value noted in the previous step:

redirectPort="hpptsPortNumber"

For example:

redirectPort="8124"
If you make these changes after the upgrade, restart DPA for the changes to take effect.

Update DPA Central connections to DPA servers

If you use DPA Central, ensure that it is configured to connect to all DPA servers over HTTPS.

Determine if DPA Central is configured to connect to any DPA servers over HTTP:
1. From the DPA menu in the upper-right corner, click Central.
2. Click Manage Central.
3. Verify that every server has a lock in the SSL column. If a server's SSL column does not display a lock, DPA Central is configured to connect to that server over HTTP.
If one or more servers are configured to use HTTP, update each server's connection properties:
1. In the Registered Servers list, click the server's display name to open the Edit Server dialog.
2. Change the Port value to the port used for HTTPS connections (8124 by default).
3. Select SSL.
4. Click Save.

Update the permissions of the DPA monitoring user for each Db2 instance

DPA 2023.2 replaces six of the deprecated SNAP* functions that previous DPA versions used to monitor Db2 database instances. Because of this change, the DPA monitoring user requires additional privileges to monitor a Db2 instance. In addition to SYSADM permissions, the user requires EXECUTE privileges on certain tables. To monitor Db2 instances with DPA 2023.2 and later versions, modify the monitoring user's permission on each Db2 instance.

The required permissions can be granted in Db2 10.1 and later. DPA does not support monitoring earlier versions of Db2.

Run the following commands to grant the DPA monitoring user EXECUTE privileges on the required tables:

grant execute on function SYSPROC.MON_GET_DATABASE to userName;
grant execute on function SYSPROC.MON_SAMPLE_WORKLOAD_METRICS to userName;
grant execute on function SYSPROC.MON_GET_ACTIVITY to <USER_NAME>;
grant execute on function SYSPROC.MON_GET_BUFFERPOOL to <USER_NAME>;
grant execute on function SYSPROC.MON_GET_TABLESPACE to <USER_NAME>;
grant execute on function SYSPROC.MON_GET_TRANSACTION_LOG to <USER_NAME>;

To verify that the permissions were applied correctly, run the following command:

select substr(authid,1,20) as authid
    , authidtype
    , privilege
    , grantable
    , substr(objectschema,1,12) as objectschema
    , substr(objectname,1,30) as objectname
    , objecttype
from sysibmadm.privileges
where objectschema ='SYSPROC' AND AUTHID='<USER_NAME>';

Known issues

In some situations, Index advisors for Oracle database instances might provide invalid recommendations

When a query on an Oracle database performs a full table scan, index advisors sometimes recommend creating an index that already exists. In other situations, index advisors might provide index creation scripts that include table columns that do not exist.

Resolution or Workaround: Ignore these index advisors.

Intermittent connection issues when monitoring IBM Db2 instances

When DPA monitors IBM Db2 instances, DPA is sometimes unable to connect to the instances. This occurs because DPA uses SNAP* functions to collect information from Db2 instances, and these functions have been deprecated by IBM.

Resolution or Workaround: None.

DPA 2023.2 replaces six of the deprecated SNAP* functions used in earlier DPA versions. The remaining SNAP* functions will be replaced in an upcoming release.

Because of this change, when you upgrade to DPA 2023.2 or later, you must update the permissions of the DPA monitoring user for each Db2 instance.

REST API does not work when you access DPA with SAML login credentials

If you access DPA with SAML login credentials and you generate a refresh token, the following message is displayed when you attempt to use that refresh token to access the REST API:

You are not authorized to perform this action. Contact your DPA administrator.

Resolution or Workaround: Access DPA with a local login when you generate the refresh token.

Importing an alert definition without the associated database assignment rule

In some situations, the log file shows the status of an imported alert definition as both Imported and Failed. This occurs when the alert definition uses a database assignment rule, but the rule was not imported and did not already exist on the server.

The two statuses indicate that the alert definition was imported but the attempt to associate the database assignment rule failed.

Resolution or Workaround: When you import an alert definition that uses a database assignment rule, either import the rule or ensure that it already exists on the server.

If you imported an alert definition and the associated rule is missing, you must edit the alert definition to specify the database instances. (You can specify instances by manually selecting them or by applying a rule.)

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End of life

Version	EoL Announcement	EoE Effective Date	EoL Effective Date
DPA 2022.2	April 18, 2023 End-of-Life (EoL) announcement - Customers on DPA version 2022.2 or earlier should begin transitioning to the latest version of DPA.	August 18, 2023 End-of-Engineering (EoE) - Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for DPA version 2022.2 or earlier will no longer actively be supported by SolarWinds.	April 18, 2024 End-of-Life (EoL) - SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for DPA version 2022.2 or earlier.
DPA 2022.1	January 18, 2023 End-of-Life (EoL) announcement - Customers on DPA version 2022.1 or earlier should begin transitioning to the latest version of DPA.	April 18, 2023 End-of-Engineering (EoE) - Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for DPA version 2022.1 or earlier will no longer actively be supported by SolarWinds.	April 18, 2024 End-of-Life (EoL) - SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for DPA version 2022.1 or earlier.
DPA 2021.3	October 18, 2022 End-of-Life (EoL) announcement - Customers on DPA version 2021.3 or earlier should begin transitioning to the latest version of DPA.	January 18, 2023 End-of-Engineering (EoE) - Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for DPA version 2021.3 or earlier will no longer actively be supported by SolarWinds.	January 18, 2024 End-of-Life (EoL) - SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for DPA version 2021.3 or earlier.
DPA 2021.1	October 18, 2022 End-of-Life (EoL) announcement - Customers on DPA version 2021.1 or earlier should begin transitioning to the latest version of DPA.	January 18, 2023 End-of-Engineering (EoE) - Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for DPA version 2021.1 or earlier will no longer actively be supported by SolarWinds.	January 18, 2024 End-of-Life (EoL) - SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for DPA version 2021.1 or earlier.
DPA 2020.2	October 18, 2022 End-of-Life (EoL) announcement - Customers on DPA version 2020.2 or earlier should begin transitioning to the latest version of DPA.	January 18, 2023 End-of-Engineering (EoE) - Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for DPA version 2020.2 or earlier will no longer actively be supported by SolarWinds.	January 18, 2024 End-of-Life (EoL) - SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for DPA version 2020.2 or earlier.

See the End of Life Policy for information about SolarWinds product life cycle phases. To see EoL dates for earlier DPA versions, see DPA release history.

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Deprecation notice

The following platforms and features are still supported in the current release. However, they will be unsupported in a future release. Plan on upgrading deprecated platforms, and avoid using deprecated features.

Type	Details
DPA server OS	Installing DPA on a server with a Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system is still supported in 2023.2, but support will be removed in an upcoming release.

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Legal notices

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SOLARWINDS DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, CONDITIONS, OR OTHER TERMS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, ON THE DOCUMENTATION, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION NONINFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR USEFULNESS OF ANY INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN. IN NO EVENT SHALL SOLARWINDS, ITS SUPPLIERS, NOR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, WHETHER ARISING IN TORT, CONTRACT OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF SOLARWINDS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

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DPA 2023.2 and 2023.2.1 release notes

New features and improvements in DPA

Additions to systems requirements and monitored instances

Security enhancements

Support for SAML authentication with Azure AD as the identity provider

Fixes

SolarWinds CVEs

Third-party CVEs

Installation or upgrade

Before you upgrade!

Redirect connection attempts that use the HTTP connector port

Update DPA Central connections to DPA servers

Update the permissions of the DPA monitoring user for each Db2 instance

Known issues

In some situations, Index advisors for Oracle database instances might provide invalid recommendations

Intermittent connection issues when monitoring IBM Db2 instances

REST API does not work when you access DPA with SAML login credentials

Importing an alert definition without the associated database assignment rule

End of life

Deprecation notice

Legal notices