Orion Platform 2016.1 Release Notes

Release Date: June 7, 2016

Orion Platform 2016.1 New Features
Orion Platform 2016.1 Fixed Issues
Orion Platform 2016.1 Known Issues
Legal Notices

Orion Platform 2016.1 New Features

Brand new look and feel

The first thing you’ll notice about this release is that the SolarWinds Orion Platform user interface is more modern-looking. The main menu bar on the top of every page has been reorganized to make navigation faster and easier, and to save space so there’s more room for data. We've also condensed the Notifications into a drop-down located in the upper-right corner.

» Read more about these changes.

ServiceNow integration

You can now integrate SolarWinds Orion Platform products with the ServiceNow, Inc. incident management system. With this integration you can:

Automatically create incidents in ServiceNow based on alerts that trigger in your SolarWinds Orion products
Synchronize the acknowledgement of SolarWinds alerts and ServiceNow incidents.
Update, close, and reopen ServiceNow incidents.

» Read more about this feature.

More powerful and easier-to-use discovery

As part of the new discovery, you can add an Active Directory (AD) Controller and then select the Organizational Units (OUs) you want to scan. Using AD for discovery is particularly useful for adding large subnets because SolarWinds Orion products can communicate directly with the devices instead of scanning every IP address.

Automatic Monitoring imports discovered devices, such as nodes, interfaces, or volumes, based on the monitoring settings you define. This means you don't have to go through the discovery import wizard after each discovery. Anything new will be monitored automatically.

» Read more about discovery.

Performance improvements

SolarWinds NPM 12.0 includes the following performance improvements:

Improved CPU performance means that the Main Polling Engine can now monitor approximately 48,000 elements at default polling intervals using stackable polling engines (each additional polling engine is capable of monitoring approximately 12,000 elements at default polling intervals). You’ll also see lower CPU utilization and fewer spikes on the main and additional polling engines, regardless of your deployment size.
Larger environments should notice an improved load time for Summary pages.
The improved installer reduces the time it takes to install the product by approximately 40%.
Scheduled recurring discoveries on large networks complete in less time.
List resources cache results to make selection faster.
Complex group structures load faster.

Other improvements in the Orion Platform

Control and manage SolarWinds Orion services across multiple pollers and web servers from a central location in the Orion Web Console instead of using the Orion Service Manager on each computer.
Use LDAP to authenticate AD users from domains outside of the one where your SolarWinds Orion server is a member.
Pre-installation checks and the Upgrade Advisor identifies potential preexisting issues which may impede the installation process and suggest upgrade paths.
SQL Express 2014 is now bundled with all evaluations.
Report timestamps support days in the work week and before/after hours comparisons.
The syslog service properly decodes the syslog message and IP Address from nodes when the message is from a node's child object's IP address.
The Active Diagnostics tools helps uncover potential problems with your SolarWinds Orion server.
Improved alerting with reusable alert actions and editable out-of-the-box alerts.
The configuration settings in the SolarWinds Orion server's web.config file can be modified from a centralized web page and are saved to the SolarWinds Orion database, preventing these settings from being lost during upgrades.
Charts that are included in the web reports can now be exported to XLS.
The Add New Group button is available on the Manage Groups of the Orion Web Console when it is viewed using Google Chrome browser with the AdBlock plugin.

Orion Platform 2016.1 Fixed Issues

Orion Platform 2016.1 fixes the following issues.

Case number	Description
938709, 962846, 939548, 942011, 980275, 983329, 967758, 964060, 980391, 944764	Trend and 95th percentile lines in charts and graphs are now displayed.
972182, 901168, 945415, 898931	Syslog messages in the Orion Web Console are successfully cleared when the message ID is greater than four billion.
602451	Views by Device for Cisco devices are now displayed correctly.
982962, 930453	After adding a variable to an alert, SWIS v3 does not increase in memory usage and restart.
968094, 797829, 919286, 923532, 930106, 963834, 919286, 928652, 951369, 971526, 873440, 906788, 847425, 842702, 937966, 963834, 885828, 941708, 902413	The SolarWinds Information Service v3 does not use a large amount of memory and slow down the Orion Web Console in the following areas: viewing or managing alerts; limitations; group limitations.
285255	SolarWinds Orion EOC reports now can have the same names as existing NPM reports.
951643, 952481, 940764	When one agent using server-initiated communication is unresponsive, other agents using server-initiated communication no longer become slow.
942697, 821824	Agents no longer stop polling intermittently and require a restart.
942537, 944099, 943472, 945395, 951003, 956896, 951493, 945400, 945911	Viewing a list of resources on a node and adding resources to monitors now work as expected.
953553	The Average Percent Memory Utilization is now shown as a percentage in reports.
879129	An issue that caused some nodes and applications to be listed as unknown because they were no longer polled and required agent plugins to be restarted has been fixed.
952402	The F5 machine type is no longer displayed as Linux.
948689, 952451, 858217	Accounts with limitations can no longer view all alerts in the Active Alerts resource.
936994, 903523, 847859, 789243, 931074, 877897	False alerts are not sent after the alert service restarts.
772266, 850670, 834886, 930283, 929019, 838502, 850670, 874673, 919674, 789010, 850551, 855505, 772266, 411372, 806760, 789010, 902337, 812703, 808373	Alert variables resolve correctly when the alerting object is removed from monitoring.
809564, 849230, 938521, 820373, 820389	Nodes are remanaged when the unmanage expiration time is met. You can also remanage nodes manually.
831198, 940302, 807479	Nodes can be restricted based on view limitations that use custom properties.
806413, 906413, 920330, 916584, 408355, 420624, 940642	Interfaces added to the Ignore list are still ignored after the caption is changed.
909507	Nodes in groups can be limited by custom properties.
933686, 912525	Volumes, interfaces, and components in groups of groups that are restricted by limitations are now visible.
914607	The SolarWinds Information Service and app pool use less memory.
933214	ESX versions 5 and 6 are detected correctly.
913493	Reports with names that include a colon can now be saved to a disk.
927721, 892512, 887801, 920942	Alerts are now triggered for custom pollers.
922142	4RF Aprisa XE and 4RF Aprisa SR now have separate device types. In previous releases, they both had a device type of 4RF Communications Ltd.
922703	Enabling and adding alerts are included as auditing events.
920215, 909061	Muticast does not impact performance when you list or modify node resources.
924202	The Orion Web Console stays up when there are agent management issues.
904628	Hewlett Packard has been added as a vendor for more devices.
873543, 901883	If the email action for an alert uses a custom property to populate the From, CC, or BCC fields, the emails are no longer rejected.
916867, 819315	The MIB has been updated to identify more Cisco devices and software correctly.
906893	Internal email addresses can be used in web-based alerting.
909197, 870804, 421330, 818925	Report schedules are displayed in your server's local time instead of UTC.
911976, 888673	Node locations are more accurate in the Worldwide map.
910389	The ${netobjectid} variable can be used in custom charts and in tables with custom SQL/SWQL.
887267	When a parent node goes down, the child nodes' status is marked as Unreachable.
900766	An account with a Group of Groups limitation can create and view child groups.
887891, 861606	Custom charts that sum a data series are displayed correctly when you stop polling on interfaces or when an interface included in the data series is unknown.
896530	The MIB has been updated to recognize more wireless controllers.
88743	When an alert has no reset condition, the "Condition must exist for more than X minutes" setting is no longer ignored.
831356, 846288, 870126, 851803, 882310	Performance when monitoring downtime events is improved.
419147, 866710, 885496, 872124, 847512	Database Maintenance support for long-running queries has been improved. This change improves performance, especially around alerting and interfaces.
917856	The module engine no longer restarts due to a large store.dat file.
846439	Receiving data from unknown protocols no longer causes the QoE sensor status to be unknown.
838052, 876311	Alerting performance is improved.
865994	Custom SQL supports UNION joins.
867289, 806498, 789566, 808532	The Additional Website displays updated group statuses.
865296	Executing an external program using an alert action and a non-service account now works as expected.
867189	HTML is processed correctly in maps when objects reach the warning threshold.
858515	Maps load more quickly, and long running queries are processed faster.
843815	When you switch an agent using agent-initiated communication to another polling engine, the agent connects to the new polling engine and is not reported as DOWN.
870045	Separate Windows credentials can be used to authenticate through the Desktop Notification Tool.
867403	Status changes are reflected accurately when the child dependency is a group.
855490, 836592	Data is available for the latest baseline details.
859747, 711194, 778573	Fixed hard drives are not labeled as network drives.
831472, 850142	Automatic geolocation in the Worldwide Map now works correctly for nodes whose location setting is GPS coordinates instead of a street address.
827428	Bulk-editing multiple nodes to change the credentials from SNMPv2 to SNMPv3 now works as expected.
850945	Traps using pre-2015.1 variables do not return an error, and all XML parses correctly.
821824	When an agent status is unknown, the server no longer appears to be UNKNOWN.
841389, 843683	Viewing the Interface Details and the Percent Utilization gauge does not result in IIS NullReferenceException errors.
838626	IIS does not restart and slow down the Orion Web Console's performance.
842167	More Cisco models have been added to the MIB.
850986	A new setting has been added to the Web settings table. The Email_ReplaceNewLinesHtml setting determines whether line breaks (\r\n characters) are converted to in HTML messages. TRUE (the default) converts line break characters to <br/>. This is the existing behavior. FALSE does not convert line break characters, which resolves an issue that can occur if Outlook wraps the <br/> in <p> tags.
848166, 831011, 815399, 815443, 822534, 822931, 419445, 820172, 828185, 823760	All group objects are clickable, and their status is updated as expected on Addition Websites.
839998	Phone numbers can be added in the recipient list for the Send email/page action.
839386, 839548	Account limitations on nodes are respected by all resources.
815142, 815102, 819909, 831276, 831398, 821577, 826485, 825920, 852070, 827406, 829027, 830084, 828900, 819670	When running database maintenance, stale data is deleted and database maintenance warnings are not received erroneously.
837409	Custom SQL/SWQL variables can be used in the Report Scheduler.
825071	Filters in customized dashboard work as expected.
835682	The option to send the Windows Event Log to a remote server has been removed from the Event Log Settings.
837196	CPU and memory usage is lower, especially when you run trigger or reset SQL queries that return a large number of results.
833753	Custom property values can be updated for all members of a group at once.
837652	Object statuses are correct for the Groups with Problems resource.
833259	Memory usage is lower when NOC views are displayed in Internet Explorer.
831690	Alert variables resolve correctly when an alert is simulated based on a group.
831033	The Message Center filters items correctly when using captions or the host name.
834498, 834949, 419501, 973864	Improvements to security to reduce the number of cross-site scripts, prevent SQL injections, validate URL redirects, and to disallow interactions with external web services.
823648	The correct page is displayed when you click an assigned alert in the Action manager.
747415, 740245	IP addresses are not used when a host name is available.
824392, 828709	Filters based on SQL/SWQL queries work as expected in reports and account limitations.
827593	Discoveries complete when there are a large number of interface information to discover.
824728	When you edit an alert that uses custom properties in the trigger or reset condition, the alert saves the property you have selected instead of the first item in the custom property list.
824856	You can use commas inside of columns when you export reports to CVS files.
826790	Alert actions trigger once for each alert instance.
772277	The Value field in the Alert Sharing settings can be edited.
811487, 816259, 818753, 823790, 823845, 822266, 818798, 818694, 821972, 823897, 821701	Thresholds are filtered by type automatically to prevent other thresholds from triggering an alert and to prevent multiple entries in reports that query thresholds.
817272, 800495, 806580, 767988, 785976, 820122, 814430, 804173, 791378, 807233, 817272, 797450, 808198, 816645, 799875, 800058	Alerts based on interfaces do not trigger when a node or a monitored interface is deleted.
815381	Multiple interface connections are not shown for a single connection.
758118, 781883	Custom graphics are displayed correctly in Network Atlas and do not cause issues when imported.
768215	The default password length in the Add Node wizard has been increased to 127 characters to match Microsoft's standard.
786521, 782540	Restricted nodes based on account limitations enabled on custom properties do not display in views.
784126, 796136	Users without an administrator account can access the Message Center.
802204	A default entry has been added to the web.config to increase the timeout value when editing accounts.
795342, 762655	A default proxy entry has been added to the Business Layer configuration file to integrate the Customer Portal into the Orion Web Console when using a proxy.
803398	Reports show values for custom properties.
785077, 716754	Custom charts display the correct values on the Y-axis.
793099	The Nodes with High Memory Utilization resource uses the correct error levels and the warning and critical colors are correct.
773254	When you create and edit report frequencies, the number of time entries displayed is the same.
807722	An unnecessary DPI licensing error has been removed from the business layer log file.

Orion Platform 2016.1 Known Issues

The All Groups resource is empty after an upgrade

Issue: The All Groups resource is empty after an upgrade if you’ve edited the resource properties to group by a property before the upgrade.

Work-around: Edit the resource and save your changes.

Cannot group custom properties by categories

Issue: When group custom properties by categories, no results are returned and the loading screen does not complete.

Work-around: Search for the category.

Legal Notices

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