Documentation forSolarWinds Platform

Orion Platform 2020.2 Release Notes

Release date: June 4, 2020

These release notes describe the new features, improvements, and fixed issues in Orion Platform 2020.2. They also provide information about upgrades and describe workarounds for known issues.

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New features and improvements in Orion Platform

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Orion Platform 2020.2 offers new features and improvements compared to previous releases of Orion Platform.

SolarWinds Platform Maps Improvements

Performance Enhancements

  • Orion Web interface optimizations and improvements

  • Configuration wizard acceleration

  • Improved query and database maintenance performance

Build Powerful New Custom Summary Dashboards

  • Proportional (Donut/Pie) widget

  • KPI (Big Number) widget

  • Custom Table widget

  • PerfStack (Time Series) widget

    » Learn more

Upgrade Improvements

  • Pre-stage future upgrades to minimize downtime

  • Pre-plan upgrades and generate an upgrade plan report

  • Automate upgrades via the Orion SDK

Enhanced Volume Status

  • Individual Warning/Critical thresholds per volume

  • Sustained thresholds

  • Dynamic threshold support

  • New Management widget where you can unmanage volumes, go directly to Performance Analysis, quickly access the Edit Node page and poll now or rediscover at a click of a button.

    • » Learn more

3rd Party Language Pack Support

  • Translate supported Orion Platform modules into additional languages

  • Share Language Packs with others on THWACK

    » Learn more

Orion Installer Improvements

  • Pre-stage the installation files on your Orion server and all scalability engines from within the Orion Web Console to decrease the amount of time required to upgrade a large deployment by downloading installation files before starting the upgrade.
  • The Pre-Stage option downloads the installation file to your primary Orion server, and then copies the file to all scalability engines in parallel.

Other Improvements

  • Monitor up to 1,000,000 elements per Orion Platform instance.
  • HTTP/S Get/Post Alert Action supports Basic/NTLM/Bearer Token Authentication
  • Reuse Classic Charts and Tables from reports on dashboards
  • FIPS compliance for Orion Agent and High Availability
  • Tool for migrating legacy reports to web-based Report Writer
  • Report Schedule support for certificate authentication
  • Support for Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Support for SQL Server 2012
  • Support for SQL Express for smaller production deployments
  • Review the list of newly supported devices

New customer installation

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For information about installing Orion Platform, see the SolarWinds Orion Installer.

How to upgrade

If you are upgrading from Orion Platform 2015.1.3 or later, use the SolarWinds Orion Installer to simultaneously upgrade your entire Orion deployment (all Orion Platform products and any scalability engines) to the current versions.

If you are upgrading from Orion Platform 2019.2, you can upgrade your entire Orion deployment from the My Orion Deployment page. Click Settings > My Orion Deployment > Updates & Evaluations. Downloading the Orion Installer is no longer necessary.

If you are upgrading from an earlier Orion Platform version, use this topic to plan and implement an upgrade to the current version of Orion Platform.

Fixed issues in Orion Platform 2020.2

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Orion Platform 2020.2 fixes the following issues.

Case Number Description
364862 The alert action Execute external action uses the provided Windows account to execute the action.
399206, 399355, 403190 Data from _cur tables is now moved to _detail tables during the maintenance, thus improving performance.
285708 PerfStack data is the same on the PerfStack page and in the widget.
Netsuite case Searching users/groups via the LDAP protocol works correctly.
252263 When configuring SAML accounts in the Internet Explorer, the SSO Service URL can be copied without issues.
4465 User scripts with the sudo argument work after the upgrade to 2019.4 without issues.
359802 AMS persistence was disabled to prevent the Orion Agent management store.dat from growing.
Netsuite cases AD groups now work correctly with user accounts. You can log in to the Orion Web Console using Windows Active Directory groups when group names or domain names do not match.
394936 Issues with Load Average polling on AIX were resolved.
384019 When entering an incorrect user password, each attempt is verified once. You have the number of attempts specified in your configuration.
299986 During the Configuration wizard, dead subscriptions are deleted on the main polling engine.
372719 XSS vulnerability caused by client-side template injection in AngularJS was addressed.
387020 The issue where the Custom Query widget using a "SELECT DISTINCT" failed was addressed.
430538 Failover support in SubscriptionManager was implemented. LogAnalyser rules synchronize correctly across additional polling engines.
345685 The issue where wrong KPIs were displayed was addressed.
364729 , 365085, 364782, 371520, 388147, 390577 The named pipeline privilege escalation vulnerability was addressed.
371827, 421004 The issue where the Agent Cortex cannot reconnect to main cortex if restarted was resolved.
420264 The issue where SAML tests failed when the Orion URL ended with / was addressed.
443849 Reports that caused issues with recursion in SQL were adjusted.
376076 Unauthenticated leak of internal telemetry data was addressed.
189092, 443685 The issue where all containers were deleted when SWIS could not load schema was addressed.
433903 The issue where unexpected symbols appeared in custom charts or tables under the Japanese locale was addressed.
384043 PerfStack status changes when aggregation and sampling periods differed were addressed.
419561 Custom Query widget: the issue where columns needed to match the casing of columns the were related to was addressed.
273033, 430879 High memory consumption caused by Service Host on Agent was addressed.
326464, 375228 The issue where error messages triggered by a Linux Agent plugin blocked the collector or polling engine was addressed.
202306 The "Cluster upgrade needed but other disc nodes shut down after this one" issue after RabbitMQ upgrade was addressed.
459326, 472414, 466561, 472414, The impact of ADV190023 Advisory on LDAP authentication was researched and addressed.
334500 The Server Error when trying to add an entity on PerfStack was addressed.
236388, 460462, 470831, The issue where multiple changes in a ServiceNow incident updated unexpectedly was addressed.
228562 The issue where session timeout expiration does not work on fresh installs was addressed.
394422 A reflected XSS vulnerability in EOC was addressed.
394422 Issues with Linux SNMP python plugins failing in FIPS environments were addressed.
409938 The machine type and vendor for Selex Communications Limited is now displayed correctly in the Orion Platform.
412099 Aware devices are displayed with a correct icon in the Orion Platform.
453900 An arbitrary file read vulnerability in phantomJS.exe was addressed.
375705, 425841 A memory leak in SWIS was addressed.
464664 The issue where an incorrect operating system for the Orion Server was displayed was addressed.
375324, 418241 The issue where a Windows account could log in using the AD group account even after the account was removed from the AD group was addressed.
380566, 388809, 451919, 476471 Web-based availability reports were optimized to prevent arithmetic overflow issues.
481734 You can now add web-based reports into the List of Reports widget.
284978 ServiceNow: Linked field choices for customized ServiceNow instances are displayed correctly in the Orion Web Console.
261934 Add Node wizard confirmation timeout issues were addressed.
461249 The issue where Orion credentials were readable within logs when manually installed in ‘Active’ (Agent-Initiated) mode was addressed.
428716 Database case-sensitive collation setting was optimized to prevent SQL issues.
385360, 471947 The issue where SNMPv3 didn't work on Microtic router 6.45.5 was addressed.
417484, 471947 A caching mechanism for SettingsDAL was introduced in the Collector to high usage of resources on startup.
450635 SolarWinds addressed the security requirement to keep RabbitMQ up-to-date and FIPS-compliant.
344516, 0427734, 0488563 SQL exceptions caused by insufficient column width were addressed.
471773, 480532 SQL exceptions caused by using the ONLINE option when rebuilding indexes were addressed.
354134, 438750 The issue where two users were logged in and shared the same session was addressed.
372843, 393764, 452906 Authentication issues where users could not log to SWIS by domain account were addressed.
354134, 438901, 459078, 485225, When you log out of the Orion Web Console, the .ASPXAUTH token on the server side is invalidated.
352627 SolarWinds addressed an issue where custom SQL alerts were not triggered when custom poller was used as NetObject.
N/A Inaccurate height and width properties for images in the SolarWinds Platform Maps editor have been addressed.

Known issues

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SolarWinds.Core.BusinessLayer.dll security vulnerability in Orion Platform 2020.2

Issue: An exposed vulnerability in the SolarWinds.Core.BusinessLayer.dll

Work-around: To address the vulnerability, upgrade to the latest hotfix for Orion Platform 2020.2.1. For details, see the article Address the SolarWinds.Core.BusinessLayer.dll security vulnerability.

039492, 164576 , 164576, 446984 / Isilon devices identified as Fraunhofer FOKUS

Issue: When you are monitoring Isilon devices, the Orion Platform displays Fraunhofer FOKUS as the vendor, while Dell might be expected.

Work-around By default, the Orion Platform uses Enterprise ID for displaying the vendor, and the EnterpriseID for Isilon devices is Fraunhofer FOKUS. To change the way vendor is displayed in the Orion Platform, create a custom node poller and set a constant value for the vendor label for Isilon devices.

384463 / Secure flags on cookies are missing

Issue: When Secure flags on ASP.NET_SessionID and .ASPXAUTH cookies are missing, you probably configured your Orion Platform with HTTP, reconfigured to HTTPS and logged in to the Orion Web Console again.

Work-around :

When you move the Orion Platform to HTTPS, use one of the following workarounds:

  • Change the server name.
  • Make sure all users log out.
  • Make sure all users clear browser cookies for Orion.

Enlarged areas in the Orion Installer hide options and the Next button

Issue: When you RDP to the server hosting your main polling engine and running the Orion Installer there, some areas in the installer are enlarged and hide options on the screen.

Work-around : Use full screen resolution or the same resolution as on the computer you are remotely connecting from.

Deprecation notices

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In Orion Platform 2020.2, the following platforms and features are deprecated.

Deprecated 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. Customizations applied to a deprecated feature might not be migrated if a new feature replaces the deprecated one.

For information about supported version of SolarWinds products, see Currently supported software versions.

Type Details
Legacy Orion Report Writer

Starting with Orion Platform 2019.4, all out-of-the-box reports are web-based.

In Orion Platform 2020.2, the Report Writer is only available in the ReadOnly mode. Migrate your custom reports to the web.

You can no longer add new Report from Orion Report Writer widgets to your views. Existing Orion Report Writer widgets in views will remain in place.
Network Atlas Network Atlas is deprecated as of this release. It is still available and supported in the current release, but it will be removed in a future release. Deprecation is an indication that you should avoid expanded use of this feature and formulate a plan to discontinue using the feature. SolarWinds recommends that you start using SolarWinds Platform Maps in the Orion Web Console to display maps of physical and logical relationships between entities monitored by the Orion Platform products you have installed.

Legal notices

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