SolarWinds Observability release notes
These release notes describe the new features, improvements, and fixed issues in SolarWinds Observability.
Learn more
- For release notes for all SolarWinds agents, libraries, and collectors, see SolarWinds Observability summary release notes.
- For currently known issues, see Known issues.
- For information about requirements, see SolarWinds Observability System Requirements.
- For each year's release updates, see: 2024 releases — 2023 releases — 2022 releases
September 2024
The following new features, improvements, and fixed issues were made to SolarWinds Observability during September.
APM new features and improvements
General improvements
-
APM now includes instrumentation support for Go services running on a Windows platform.
Database new features and improvements
General database observability improvements
- Mute or unmute individual advisors for specific database instances or all database instances.
- Use the Share Sample button to share Sample Explain plans with other stakeholders.
Network new features and improvements
List resources for monitored network devices and hosts
List and edit resources monitored on network devices and hosts monitored by a Network Collector.
Resource loading times depend on the number of resources associated with the device.
Other network observability improvements
- The flow for adding network devices and NetPath operations using the Add Data wizard has been updated.
- In the Network area, the Config Management tab displays an overview of configuration changes in your organization.
- Encryption for the configuration storage has been added.
Infrastructure new features and improvements
General Kubernetes improvements
- Details pages for Kubernetes Pods, Nodes, or DaemonSets now contain a Yaml tab containing the latest manifest for the object.
- Managed and Discovered APM services are displayed on the Cluster Details page in the.
Discover integrations on hosts automatically
Find newly discovered integrations running on monitored hosts and add them for monitoring. Open a host in Entity Explorer, go to Integrations > Discovered tab. Click the vertical ellipsis for a discovered integration, select Add Integration, and complete the wizard.
Review and manage integrations on hosts. In Entity Explorer for a host, click Integrations > Managed. Use the vertical ellipsis actions to manage the Agent, edit or remove the integration.
Other hosts improvements
- The flow for adding hosts using the Add Data wizard has been updated.
- More details for hosts monitored by Network Collectors:
- Monitored interfaces and volumes on Details pages
- Additional details, such as CPU and memory utilization on Infrastructure pages for hosts
- Average Response Time and Availability widgets added to the Details pages
SolarWinds Observability Agent improvements
If you deploy Agents in AWS and have SolarWinds Observability integrated with your AWS account, you can see the Cloud Instance Name on the Overview tab in the Agent Details panel (Settings > Agents > click an Agent and go to Overview).
A new Dependencies tab is added to the Agent Details panel. It lists the software or files necessary for the successful operation of the Agent and its plugins.
Logs new features and improvements
Other log observability improvements
-
The Log Viewer now includes Papertrail themes and font controls.
New features and improvements to general features
Reports scheduler
Schedule recurring reports for your monitored SolarWinds Observability entities with the reports scheduler. Use your regularly scheduled reports to make data-driven decisions and take proactive measures to address any issues. Click Reports to open the reports tab and select the vertical ellipsis for a report you want to schedule. See Reports.
Onboarding enhanced visual improvements
The Add data onboarding wizard has been updated to include visual enhancements and a more streamlined experience.
Custom Color for series in Dashboards
Add custom colors for series charts in Custom dashboards. Open the desired dashboard and click a Time Series widget. Add a series and then click the Use custom color toggle to apply the desired color.
UI improvements
- Navigation panel design update: separate spaces with lines
- Updated time filter options
August 2024
The following new features, improvements, and fixed issues were made to SolarWinds Observability during August.
DEM new features and improvements
General digital experience observability improvements
- The DEM REST API supports POST configuration and SSL renegotiation for websites.
APM new features and improvements
General improvements
- Open the Trace Detail view from the Traces Explorer. Click the vertical ellipsis (), choose Open Trace, and then enter the trace ID to open the detail view.
- In the Trace Detail view, the table on the Errors tab includes a Service column.
- The time selector on Kubernetes tabs works correctly.
- On the Trace Chart, child spans of the currently selected span are highlighted.
- In the Trace Explorer, click the question mark icon to view examples of search syntax.
Database new features and improvements
General database observability improvements
- The database Inspector page includes a share button used to copy your current Inspector page and share it with other SolarWinds Observability users in your workspace.
- On the database Events tab, you can now sort the Event Details table by event type or count.
- The Query Details page displays a hyperlink navigation button that details the page you were on previously.
Network new features and improvements
Improved Port Details tab
- The ports list on the Ports tab has a new user-friendly view, consistent with the VLAN tab. Each port can be expanded to view available related endpoints.
- Customers can search for ports by their name and filter ports by their endpoint data (IP, MAC).
Other network observability improvements
- Added support for adding and observing network devices polled via SNMPv3.
Infrastructure new features and improvements
SolarWinds Observability Agent improvements
- A new column with Platform was added on the Agents page.
- A warning icon was added when the Agent is running in a container and its version is outdated. Hover over the icon to see the latest available version.
- Information with the latest available version was added for Agents with disabled auto-update.
- Agents Settings were added to the Agents page. Click the Settings icon to enable or disable the Disable auto update for all Agents option.
- The option to remove the host-monitoring plugin was added to the Inspector Panel for Plugins.
New features and improvements to general features
General alerting improvements
- "Entity group" is now available as an alert definition scope.
Preserving of email address when switching between sign-in options
When you enter an email address in either of the sign-in options (local credentials or SSO) and then switch to the other sign-in option, the email is preserved to avoid typing it again.
July 2024
The following new features, improvements, and fixed issues were made to SolarWinds Observability during July.
DEM new features and improvements
Synthetic transactions
-
Synthetic transactions are generally available in SolarWinds Observability. Synthetic transaction monitoring with SolarWinds Observability provides a way to automate and test website interactions synthetically so that you can be sure your website is performing as intended. See Synthetic transactions.
APM new features and improvements
General APM improvements
-
The Usage tab on the Application Performance Monitoring overview provides insight into the instrumented service metrics, request rate, ingested traces, trace operations, and exceptions.
-
On the Service Details page, a link from the tooltip in the HTTP Status Codes widget opens a documentation topic that explains the categorization of service request HTTP status codes represented in the chart.
-
Logs for instrumented Lambda functions can now be collected and visualized in the Logs tab for a FaaS service.
Database new features and improvements
General database observability improvements
- Database Area Overview tables can now be filtered by database using the database filter widget.
- Galera DB charts are available in System dashboards for customers with Galera MySQL setups.
- In the Agent Settings page, you can remove database plugins through vertical ellipsis () menu options.
Network new features and improvements
View network structure and network device connections on the Topology map
-
Enhance observability and troubleshooting by visually representing the network structure on a Topology map. The Topology map shows network device health, alerts triggered by devices, and connections between individual devices. Click Network in the left menu and select the Topology tab. Zoom in to see individual nodes.
-
Use filters, group by, and search options to limit displayed network devices and their connections.
Import discovery updates from SolarWinds Observability
-
Import network devices and hosts discovered on a Network Collector directly from SolarWinds Observability. This improvement requires Network Collector 2024.2.10.
Add network devices for monitoring from SolarWinds Observability
-
You can add network devices for monitoring directly from SolarWinds Observability. This improvement requires Network Collector 2024.2.10.
Other network observability improvements
- Performance improvements connected with the upgrade to Network Collector 2024.2.10 - you ca monitor up to 7,000 standard network devices per Network Collector. See Network Collector release notes.
Infrastructure new features and improvements
General Kubernetes improvements
-
The Kubernetes Deployment version detection now uses the label
app.kubernetes.io/version
in addition to the Container image tag. -
StatefulSet labels and annotations are now displayed in the StatefulSet Inspector Panel.
Other Agent/OTel integrations improvements
- Change of values for
process.cpu.utilization
caused by a third-party dependency (OTel Collector) in SolarWinds Observability Agent: the original CPU utilization value is now divided by the number of cores. For example, if a process is using 2 CPU cores on a 16-core machine, the value changes from2
to0.125
. See release notes for OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib. - Support for three metrics for the IIS integration was added. Added metrics include the number of anonymous connections per second (
iis.connection.anonymos/rate
), the total number of connection attempts per second (iis.connection.attempt.count/rate
), and the total bytes sent and recieved per second (iis.network.io/rate
).
Sprawl tab added to the Virtualization area overview
-
The Sprawl tab was added to the Virtualization area overview (Infrastructure > Virtualization > Sprawl). The tab displays widgets listing VMs that need attention and recommendations on how to address the issues.
New features and improvements to explorers and analyzers
General explorers and dashboards improvements
- Dashboard widgets can now display the selected metrics by entity type, making the metrics easier to browse through.
- Entity groups can now be edited.
- Groups page can be viewed when a time filter is selected.
June 2024
The following new features, improvements, and fixed issues were made to SolarWinds Observability during June.
APM new features and improvements
General APM improvements
-
Open the Trace Detail view from the Traces Explorer. Click the vertical ellipsis (), choose Open Trace, and then enter the trace ID to open the detail view.
-
In the Trace Detail view, the table on the Errors tab includes a Service column.
-
The time selector on Kubernetes tabs works correctly.
-
On the Trace Chart, child spans of the currently selected span are highlighted.
-
In the Trace Explorer, click the question mark icon to view examples of search syntax.
Network new features and improvements
- Pause/resume metrics collection for nodes in SolarWinds Observability.
- Use the Collector Data Migrator stand-alone application to export/import network devices and credentials from existing SolarWinds Platform deployments to Network Collectors was introduced. See Collector Data Migration Tool.
- You can use Platform Connect to get data from all supported SolarWinds Platform products to SolarWinds Observability.
Infrastructure new features and improvements
General Kubernetes improvements
- The SWO K8s Collector is now available as an AKS extension and an EKS add-on, in addition to the already available Helm chart.
- The Entity Explorer can now list also Kubernetes StatefulSets entities.
- The Entity Explorer can now filter Kubernetes Deployments entities by cluster.
- Improved CPU / memory utilization calculation for pods without consistently configured limits.
- Extended the list of Kubernetes services with additional information.
Self-managed hosts improvements
- Support for OpenSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was added.
- New filters were added to the Agents page: Connection, Agent Status, Version, Plugin Status, Plugin Type.
New features and improvements to explorers and analyzers
General explorers and dashboards improvements
- Introduced a widget allowing users to display the top entities by a given metric.
- Widgets can be added to a dashboard by clicking their tiles.
May 2024
The following new features, improvements, and fixed issues were made to SolarWinds Observability during May.
DEM new features and improvements
DEM reports
The SolarWinds Observability reporting feature includes three DEM out-of-the-box reports: the Website: HTTP & HTTPS availability report, the DEM Entities Configuration report, and the URI: TCP & Ping availability report.
Other digital experience observability improvements
- When you select the HTTPS protocol on the Availability Monitoring screen of the Add Website wizard, you have an option to allow insecure renegotiation. Enabling the option helps you identify an insecure connection with a database, since SSL tests may start failing.
Allowing insecure SSL renegotiation introduces a security risk in the communication process. Checking this option could lead to exposing to unauthorized entities and possibility of unauthorized access, interception, or manipulation of sensitive data, compromising the integrity and security of the communication channel.
APM new features and improvements
Sortable columns for Services in the Entity Explorer
When you are viewing Service entities in the Entity Explorer, you can sort them by any column in ascending and descending directions. In addition to the other columns, the Requests, Requests Rate, Response Time, and Error Ratio columns are now sortable.
Database new features and improvements
Events-based alerts
You can create alerts on database events from the Alerts tab, enabling more effective monitoring and visibility.
Other database observability improvements
- When you add the Queries Profiler datasets on the Inspector tab and click a query name from the table, you are redirected to the Query details page.
- On the Databases Overview, you can edit the display name of any database instance in the Database Instances widget by clicking the vertical ellipsis on the top-right.
- In the agent configuration section of the Add Data wizard, a tooltip is added to suggest the location for your configuration file.
Network new features and improvements
- Config Management: See device configurations and compare them to identify added, removed, or changed lines.
- NetPath: BGP data was added to NetPath Paths. You can see BGP data for public nodes along the critical service delivery path.
- Virtualization: Virtualization entity relationships for datastores and hosts/VMs with problems were added.
- Reports: Reports on network, hosts, NetFlow, software, and hardware health were added.
Infrastructure new features and improvements
Self-managed hosts improvements
- Support for CentOS 6 added
- Support for ARM architecture was added
Virtualization improvements
- Virtualization datastore relationships: Virtual clusters, virtual hosts, and virtual machines now provide visibility into related virtual datastores.
- Visibility into virtual devices with problems: New widgets for virtual cluster and virtual host entities show related Virtual Hosts with problems and Guests with problems, respectively.
Logs new features and improvements
General log observability improvements
- Users can review logging data by using REST API.
New features and improvements to explorers and analyzers
Reporting
- A comprehensive reporting feature is available in the left pane, allowing users to analyze performance and behavior of systems and applications and take proactive measures to address issues.
- Review the list of out-of-the box reports for infrastructure, network, or DEM. Network and infrastructure reports display data collected by a Network Collector or cloud-connected Hybrid Cloud Observability. Click a report to preview the data or click Export to CSV to download the report for audit purposes or other operations.
Other explorers and dashboards improvements
- The gauge widget's range is now configurable.
- Widget configuration has been expanded to handle metrics without data and to allow for the selection of Metrics by Entity Type
- The metadata pane has been improved to be consistent and easier to read.
- The dashboard creation now includes a widget tray with various configurable widgets.
New features and improvements to general features
General alerting improvements
- When attempting to delete a notification that is linked to an alert, a pop-up appears, listing the related alert definitions.
- Log alert notifications now include a timestamp, hostname, and app name, to align with Papertrail.
- In the alert creation wizard, users can choose whether notifications are to be aggregated or not.
April 2024
The following new features, improvements, and fixed issues were made to SolarWinds Observability during April 2024.
DEM new features and improvements
General digital experience observability improvements
- POST data functionality has been added as a part of website entity monitoring.
APM new features and improvements
AWS Lambda (Early Access program)
APM Instrumentation of serverless services based on the AWS Lambda functions is available.
Relative Start Time column in Trace Details
Relative Start Time column has been added to Trace Breakdown table in trace details. The table can be sorted by that column.
General APM improvements
- The APM Data Volume dashboard includes additional metrics and improvements.
- Smart search bar is added to APM dashboard tabs.
- To indicate the current status, KPI widgets on custom dashboards change colors when a configurable threshold is crossed.
- Associating user defined attributes for a particular token to APM telemetry is possible.
Database new features and improvements
General database observability improvements
- Improved profiler table view
- One second granularity on the samples chart and system metrics on inspector
- Increased total number of advisors
Infrastructure new features and improvements
AWS Poller (Cumulus)
Amazon CloudWatch API is used to retrieve metric data from AWS. The GetMetricData API endpoint is called to retrieve all of the metrics since the completion of the last polling task.
Kubernetes: Network Topology
Cluster level network diagram showing workloads grouped by namespaces.
Hosts: UAMS_OVERRIDE_HOSTNAME definition
- Set up host name option added to the Add Host wizard. Use the option to include a specific UAMS_OVERRIDE_HOSTNAME definition in the installation instructions.
- Agents: A new field for hostname override was added in the Overview tab in the Inspector Panel on the Agents page.
Read-only configuration management
Configuration from Hybrid Cloud Observability or Network Collector network devices can be listed, diffed, and viewed in SolarWinds Observability.
General virtualization improvements
-
Datastore-cluster relationship is supported.
-
Widgets display relationships between virtualization entities and virtual datastores.
-
Related entities are shown in widgets.
New features and improvements to explorers and analyzers
Duplicate dashboards
Users can duplicate a dashboard directly from the specific dashboard page, in addition to the list view.
Saved searches
A toggle in Settings->Saved Searches has been added to filter searches saved by the user
'Include Metrics Without Data' toggle in Metrics Explorer
The most important metrics related to entities (listed in entity types schemas) can now be displayed, even if they don’t have data.
Other explorers and dashboards improvements
- Renamed Home to Overview.
- UI improvements to the Events Explorer.
- Added vertical lines to denote the start and end of a maintenance window in the entity view.
New features and improvements to general features
Alert templates
Extension to alerting feature allowing users to create alerts directly from OOTB templates created by feature teams.
Maintenance windows
The feature that allows users to mute alert notifications during scheduled time frames in order to minimalize alert noise during maintenance of user infrastructure.
Other alerting improvements
- Webhook improvement, allowing users to get information about egress IPs.
- SWSD improvement, allowing users to close an alert on the SWSD side automatically when the same alert becomes non-active in SolarWinds Observability.
Fixes
-
When searching for entities to add to an entity group, clicking Next shows additional search results.
-
The Entity Explorer does not time out when listing a large number of entities in a custom time period.
-
The Health score always shows the current value for a database that is disconnected and no longer provides metrics.
-
The Edit Group wizard refreshes automatically when adding or removing entities from an existing group.
March 2024
March 27, 2024
New features and improvements
- Telegraf integrations: Support for the following Telegraf integrations added: Fluentd, HAProxy, NGINX Plus API, NTPQ, StatsD, and Varnish. Entities for Fluentd, HAProxy, NGINX Plus API, NTPQ, and Varnish were added to the Entity Explorer, related metrics are available in the Metrics Explorer. StatsD metrics are available in the Metrics Explorer.
- DEM: Public REST API support for Website entity CUD operations.
March 24, 2024
New features and improvements
-
Database: Added Wait time stats widgets to Query Details, Entity Explorer, and Databases Overview.
-
Database: Added a Clear All button to the Inspector.
-
Database: Events tab indicates the inclusion of internal queries.
-
Database: Added Visual Explain plans for samples that have raw explain plans available.
March 20, 2024
New features and improvements
- Network: Network Collector and SolarWinds Platform Connect were added to Agent-based integrations in Settings. You can enable/disable integrated collector and Platform Connect instances.
- Hosts: An option to Edit Agent Name/Host Display Name was added to the Summary step of the Add Host wizard.
- Agents: Support for Degraded status was added to the Filters and Connections column on the Agents page.
February 2024
February 29, 2024
New features and improvements
- Network: Users can delete, stop collecting data, and resume collecting data from network devices, servers, or hosts monitored via a Network Collector directly from SolarWinds Observability.
- Hosts: Added an Assets tab to the Host Details page. The Assets tab displays hardware details on the host, such as CPUs and memory.
- Hosts: Updated the Add Host wizard. Users can select how to gather data about the host: using the SolarWinds Observability Agent, Cloud provider API, or the Network Collector.
- Hosts: Generating a sample Agent ID needed for UAMS_CLIENT_ID_OVERRIDE was added to the Docker tab in the Configuration Management Tool of the Add Host wizard.
February 26, 2024
New features and improvements
- Virtualization: The following Host Detail widgets are added:
- Top Virtual Machines Network Traffic
- Top Virtual Machine CPU Consumption of Host
- Top Virtual Machine Memory Consumption of Host
- Top CPUs by PercentLoad
- CPUs by PercentLoad
- Virtualization: The following Active Alerts widgets are added to all Summary pages:
- Hypervisors
- Clusters
- Hosts
- VMs
- Datastores
- Virtualization: Inspector panels display additional information, primarily specific to hypervisors.
- Virtualization: Datastore inspection panel is available.
February 21, 2024
New features and improvements
- APM: The Application Performance Monitoring page has a new tabs layout.
- APM: The Service Details page has a new tabs layout.
- APM: Filtration based on percentiles is available in the Trace Explorer.
- APM: The 'Total Number of Spans' and 'Top 10 Services by Number of Spans' widgets are added to the APM Data Volume dashboard.
- APM: P50, P95, and P99 percentiles are added to the Response Time widget on the Service Overview page.
- APM: P50, P95, and P99 percentiles are added to the Average Response Time widget on the Transaction Overview page
- APM: Trend arrows are added on Response Time widgets on the Service Overview and Transaction Overview pages.
Fixes
- APM: A problem with missing code profiling data is resolved.
- APM: The data loader visualization for time selector change on the APM Overview page is corrected.
February 19, 2024
New features and improvements
- Network: Added support for monitoring SD-WAN data on Prisma (formerly CloudGenix) orchestrators.
- Network: Added support for protecting the Network Collector with SolarWinds High Availability. New Settings page added (Settings > High Availability).
February 5, 2024
New features and improvements
- K8s: The Connections tab now supports Istio metrics as the source of its data, in addition to the previously supported eBPF metrics.
- K8s: Extended the Connections tab to show information about detected SolarWinds Observability integrations, websites, or databases.
- K8s: Added filtering to the Connections tab.
January 2024
January 31, 2024
New features and improvements
- Hosts: Set up proxy option was added in the Installer tab of the Add Host wizard, use it to include a defined HTTPS proxy definition in the installation instructions.
- Agents: Edit Display Name option was added on the Agents page. Use it to change Agent names.
- Agents: A new column with Type was added in the Plugins tab in the Inspector Panel on the Agents page.
- Agents: A new field with Hostname was added in the Overview tab in the Inspector Panel on the Agents page.
- Database monitoring: Added the Inspector tab to the database area overview.
January 29, 2024
New features and improvements
- Infrastructure/Entity Explorer: A Virtualization tab has been added to the Server Details page in the Entity Explorer.
- Infrastructure/Entity Explorer: An Alerts tab has been added to the Server Details page in the Entity Explorer.
January 10, 2024
New features and improvements
- K8s: Added information about versions of detected Kubernetes Deployments.
- K8s: Added a new Connections tab on the Details pages of Kubernetes Deployments, StatefulSets, and DaemonSets, showing network connections between them and the related Kubernetes workloads.
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