Documentation forServer & Application Monitor

SAM 2020.2.5 Release Notes

Release date: March 25, 2021

Updated April 29, 2021

These release notes describe new features, improvements, and fixed issues in the SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) 2020.2.5 service release. They also provide details about installation, upgrades, and workarounds for known issues.

These release notes provide the following details:

Learn more

New features and improvements in SAM

SAM 2020.2.5 includes the following updates:

  • Expanded integration with SolarWinds AppOptics: If you use SAM with either AppOptics or the APM Integrated Experience that includes AppOptics, Loggly, and Pingdom, you can track service status and metrics on the new APM Services page.

    APM service details also appear in a new widget on the SAM Summary page.

  • Manage Credentials page: Use this new page as a centralized place to manage:


    • You can access this new page from the Global SAM Settings section of the SAM Settings page.

  • API Poller improvements: Save response headers for use as variables in subsequent requests, which can be helpful if you want to reuse cookies included in set-cookie headers.

    Through April 2021, share your homegrown API pollers on THWACK for a chance to win prizes and earn THWACK points. For details, see Wanted: API Pollers — Claim Your Bounty.

    You can also delete API poller credentials on the new Manage Credentials page.

  • Increased automation: The CreateApplication verb in the Orion SDK was updated to support AppInsight applications, so you can use PowerShell scripts to interact directly with SWIS and add AppInsight templates to nodes. A script to add the Windows Scheduled Tasks Monitor (WSTM) is also available. Download scripts here.
  • Application Dependency updates: Queries and connection-matching algorithms were revamped to improve performance by reducing Orion server CPU usage during data processing, as well as CPU usage by the SAM.ADM Connection Detector process. In addition, polling no longer occurs on Additional Polling Engines; it’s restricted to the Main Polling Engine so you see the latest data sooner.
  • Amazon Web Service (AWS) region updates: The following new regions are enabled by default for standard AWS accounts used in SAM and other Orion Platform modules that support cloud infrastructure monitoring:
    • Africa (Cape Town)
    • Asia Pacific (Hong Kong)
    • Europe (Milan)
    • Europe (Stockholm)
    • Middle East (Bahrain)

    The following new regions are also available, but disabled by default. To enable them, see this article.

    • Asia Pacific (Osaka-Local)
    • AWS GovCloud (US-East)
    • China (Ningxia)

To learn about security improvements, see the Orion Platform 2020.2.5 Release Notes.

New customer installation

Use the Orion Installer, available in the Customer Portal, to install SAM. See the Orion Platform Products Installation and Upgrade Guide for details. After installation, see the SAM Getting Started Guide to learn about configuring and customizing SAM.

How to upgrade

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To prepare for the upgrade:

  1. Read these Release Notes.
  2. Confirm that all servers comply with SAM 2020.2 System Requirements.
  3. (Optional) Back up custom code, such as modified SolarWinds .css files or added .js files.

If upgrading from a previous version, note the following details:

  • The Orion Log Viewer (OLV) replaces legacy Syslog and Trap viewers.
  • To collect trust data for Global Catalog (GC) servers, AppInsight for Active Directory uses port 3268. If a GC domain controller uses port 3269 instead, update that setting in the application monitor assigned to the node. See Configure AppInsight for Active Directory on nodes.
  • The Application Dependencies feature is disabled during upgrades to prevent performance issues in large environments. To restart polling later, enable the Application Dependencies feature.
  • If you exceed recommended cloud monitoring limits and receive a 503 Service Unavailable error when adding Azure accounts, click here for a workaround.
  • To monitor Exchange Server 2016 or later, install PowerShell 2.0 or later and provide local Administrator rights.
  • If monitoring containers in your SAM environment, the Kubernetes (K8s) script was updated for Kubernetes v1.16. To download a script for an earlier K8s version, see this article.
  • If you upgrade to a localized version of SAM, application monitor templates with new versions that support localization are replaced. Back up any SAM templates and application monitors modified with custom changes. You cannot roll back to English after installing the Orion Platform in another language.

  • Due to Microsoft end-of-support for Basic Authentication in Exchange Online APIs, the following application monitor templates were deprecated in SAM 2020.2. Consider using API poller templates instead.

    • Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online
    • Microsoft Office 365 Mobile Device Management
    • Microsoft Office 365 Portal
    • Microsoft Office 365 Subscription
  • The following application monitor templates were deprecated in SAM 2020.2 but remain available in THWACK. Click here for the latest Citrix templates, including the Citrix Hypervisor template that replaces the Citrix XenServer template.
    • Citrix PVS Accelerator for XenServer
    • Citrix XenApp 5.0 Core WMI Counters
    • Citrix XenApp 5.0 ICA Session WMI Counters
    • Citrix XenApp 5.0 Presentation Server WMI Counters
    • Citrix XenApp 5.0 Services
    • Citrix XenServer
  • The following application monitor templates were deprecated in SAM 2020.2.1 but remain available in THWACK. Use AppInsight for SQL to monitor the NTA Flow Storage Database instead.
    • SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Database
    • SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer
  • The Orion Server 2017.3 and SolarWinds Failover Engine templates were replaced by Orion Server 2020.2 templates. Deprecated templates remain in THWACK and legacy SAM installations.

Starting in SAM 2020.2.5, apiversion=v1.0 is required in PowerShell scripts for legacy Microsoft Office 365 Teams and Microsoft Office 365 OneDrive application monitor templates and related application monitors. Otherwise, scripts return [ERROR] The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found. messages. Alternatively, use one of the Microsoft 365 API poller templates.

Check THWACK periodically for updates to SAM application monitor templates. Apart from AppInsight templates, those templates are not updated automatically during upgrades, to avoid overwriting any custom changes. For details, see Import and export SAM templates.

Begin the upgrade

To upgrade your entire Orion deployment, including all Orion Platform products and any scalability engines, run the SolarWinds Orion Installer. Alternatively, upgrade SAM directly from the Orion Web Console by clicking Settings > My Orion Deployment. In SAM 6.9 and later, Downloading the Orion Installer is no longer necessary.

Learn more:

Fixed issues

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Case number Description

00540852, 00106094, 00539252

 Days Remaining values in SSL Certificate Expiration and IIS SSL Certificate Expiration widgets reflect the latest data monitored by AppInsight for IIS.

00205048, 00268181, 00286434, 00446482

 Application Dependency polling succeeds without exceptions related to duplicate node IDs in the dbo.AgentManagement_Agents table.

00430879

 The ServiceDirectoryClient component was updated to prevent high memory utilization and exceptions related to memory leaks linked to the SolarWinds.ServiceHost.Process and the ServiceDirectoryClient component.

00735548

 A SolarWinds.Agent.JobEngine.plugin was updated to prevent orphaned processes that cause high CPU loads on AIX servers.

00607138, 00659629

 The DHCP User Experience Monitor supports multiple instances running on the same polling engine without mutex-related timeout exceptions.

00632932

 The Application Details widget on the AppInsight for Active Directory view uses the local time zone for the Last Successful Poll time, instead of UTC.

00624563, 00621720, 00510286, 00544651

 The Asset Inventory feature can poll for warranty data on Dell M100e and Dell PowerEdge servers. Click here for details.

00651272

 When upgrading from a SAM 2019.4 environment with Azure SQL, the Configuration Wizard does not display "invalid object name sys.database_mirroring" messages.

00785770, 00787837, 00786700, 00788347, 00785594

 AppInsight for Exchange polling succeeds without PowerShell FullLanguageMode errors after applying Microsoft Exchange security update, KB5001779. This issue was resolved via SAM 2020.2.5 Hotfix 1, released on April 29, 2021. The latest Orion Installer includes this hotfix.

00775070, 00783484, 00780954, 00786036

 Custom PowerShell script monitors run without CredentialsParameter errors after upgrading to SAM 2020.2.5. This issue was resolved via SAM 2020.2.5 Hotfix 1, released on April 29, 2021. The latest Orion Installer includes this hotfix.
To learn about fixed issues in the Orion Platform, see the Orion Platform 2020.2.5 release notes.

SolarWinds would like to thank our Security Researchers for reporting issues in a responsible manner and working with our security, product, and engineering teams to fix vulnerabilities.

CVE-ID Vulnerability Title Description Severity Credit
CVE-2021-27277 Deserialization of Untrusted Data Privilege Escalation Vulnerability A vulnerable endpoint existed in the Cloud Virtual Infrastructure Monitor (VIM) business layer. A local attacker could leverage this to perform deserialization and execute arbitrary code as SYSTEM. High Harrison Neal, ZDI Trend Micro

To address this issue, SolarWinds recommends using latest version of SAM and the Orion Platform, including hotfixes and service releases. Block low-privilege access to Windows servers hosting the Orion Platform products. Additional recommendations include:

  • Apply proper segmentation controls on the network where you deploy the Orion Platform and SQL Server instances.
  • Implement strict access control and auditing in your environment at operating system and network layers. Limit access to the Orion Platform and SQL server instances to only those authorized persons who require access as part of their duties.
  • Separate Orion Platform servers from your infrastructure on managed VLANs and jumpboxes.

See also Secure Configuration for the Orion Platform.

Known issues

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Issue Notes

AIX template scripts may fail for some component monitors if the "Inherit credentials from node" option is enabled. Header issues in Perl script output block component monitors from inheriting credentials from nodes.

This may impact CPU statistics, Paging statistics/sec, Disk operations/sec of system devices, and Top 10 Active Process metrics displayed in widgets.

As a workaround, edit component monitors to provide credentials, or avoid using "Inherit credentials from node" option. Click here for details.
Some SAM pages and widgets related to features introduced in SAM 2020.2 are not compatible with Internet Explorer (IE) 11. Use a Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge browser instead of IE.
A known Microsoft issue may create inconsistency in SAM SQL tables, as indicated by a Database Integrity Check message.

As a workaround, back up the Orion database and execute a SQL query provided here.

Windows Scheduled Tasks Monitor (WSTM) polling fails for Active Directory nodes with UPN-formatted credentials. "Access is denied" errors appear in Windows Scheduled Tasks widgets. As a workaround, use the down-level logon name format (domain\user) instead of UPN format (user@domain). Click here for details.
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2-2012 R2 Failover Cluster (Advanced) template fails with errors and node status switches to Down. If the 64-bit FailoverClusters module conflicts with PowerShell bitness and polling fails, modify scripts in the application monitor assigned to the node. Click here for details.
Warranty data does not appear after Asset Inventory polling of HPE Proliant servers. API changes made by HP interrupt polling. No workaround is currently available. Click here for details.
As described here, SAM deploys agent plug-ins to target systems to monitor application connections. Application dependency polling is not supported on target Linux systems that use GNU C Library (glibc) 2.17 or earlier. Plug-ins deployed by SAM 2020.2 and later include an Nping executable binary that doesn't support distributions based on glibc 2.17 or earlier, such as CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6. As a workaround, update Linux distributions on target systems. SolarWinds recommends testing in an experimental OS first.

End of life

See the End of Life Policy for details about life cycles for SolarWinds products.

EoL Announcements EoE Effective Dates EoL Effective Dates

June 4, 2020

End-of-Life (EoL) announcement – Customers on SAM 6.6 and SAM 6.7 should begin transitioning to the latest version of SAM.

September 4, 2020

End-of-Engineering (EoE) – Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for SAM 6.6 and SAM 6.7 will no longer be actively supported by SolarWinds.

September 3, 2021

EoL – SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for SAM 6.6 and SAM 6.7.

See Currently supported software versions for more information.

Legal notices

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