Documentation forSecurity Event Manager

SEM 2020.4.1 release notes

Release date: January 24, 2021

This document summarizes new features, improvements, and fixed issues in Security Event Manager (SEM) 2020.4.1, additional features, and upgrade notes and workarounds for known issues.

If you are looking for previous release notes for SEM, see Previous Version documentation.

New in SEM 2020.4.1

SEM 2020.4.1 is a service release containing the following improvements:

SEM 2020.4

SEM 2020.4 was released on November 18, 2020.

End of life, end of support, and deprecation notices

End of life

Version

EOL

Announcements

EOE Effective

dates

 EOL Effective dates
6.6 June 6, 2020: End-of-Life (EoL) announcement – Customers on SEM version 6.6 should begin transitioning to the latest version of SEM. September 6, 2020: End-of-Engineering (EoE) – Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for SEM version 6.6 will no longer be actively supported by SolarWinds. September 6, 2021: End-of-Life (EoL) – SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for SEM version 6.6.

End of support

Type Details
Windows Server 2008

Beyond SEM 2019.4, Windows Server 2008 is no longer supported. SEM still supports Windows Server 2008 R2.

Deprecation notice

Type Details
Directory Service Query tool As of SEM version 2020.4, the Directory Service Query tool will no longer be usable for configuration of LDAP authentication. Users will need to use LDAP configuration in the HTML5 Console Settings page.
VMware vSphere 5.5 Beyond SEM 6.7, releases no longer support vSphere 5.5. Find more information here.

New customer installation

For information about installing SEM, see the SEM Installation Guide and the SEM Getting Started Guide. For system requirements see the SEM 2020.4 System Requirements.

Before you upgrade

Migrate LDAP connectors

It is recommended that users remove any ambiguity in their Directory Service Tool connector configurations to allow migration to run as smoothly as possible. This can be by ensuring only one Directory Service Tool connector configuration is set up per domain.

All Directory Service Tool connectors are removed in process of the migration.

How to upgrade

If you are upgrading from a previous version, use the following resources to plan and implement your upgrade.

The SEM Appliance must be upgraded to 2020.2.1 before upgrading to 2020.4.1 See the SEM Upgrade Path to help you plan and execute your upgrade.

Download the upgrade package from the SolarWinds Customer Portal.

In new installations of SEM (6.7 and newer), corresponding agent versions communicate by default using a secure certificate, which no longer supports TLS 1.0, 3DES, or anonymous cipher. If you need to connect to earlier agent versions, navigate to the SEM Console security tab (Settings > Security), and switch the toggle button to enable lower security settings. Versions older than 6.3 are not supported.

 

CMC

Since the release of SEM 2020.4, a password is required to access the CMC command-line interface. The default CMC password is password. See Change the SEM CMC password for instructions on changing it.

File system consistency check (fsck)

During your upgrade, the system may run a fsck check during reboot. This can last 30 or more minutes depending on the quantity of data in the data partition. With the Debian version upgrade, the file system is configured to initiate the check when certain conditions are met:

  • 21 mounts since the last check (during the 22nd reboot)

Or:

  • Six months since the last check

Directory Service Query connectors

The upgrade to 2020.4 and 2020.4.1 automatically replaces Directory Service Query connectors with LDAP configurations. Not connection testing is performed, and therefore it is not guaranteed that resulting LDAP configuration will work. You should check all LDAP configuration after the upgrade.

Raw log files

Raw log file processing is facilitated in the flash-based SEM console only.

Supported connectors

Find SEM connector information on Thwack.

Fixed issues

For SEM 2020.4 fixed issues see SEM 2020.4 Release Notes.

Issue: Agents are not able to start due to compromised certificate
Cause: Due to a known bug in the RemoteAgentInstallers, auto-upgrade will not work.
Workaround: Reinstall agents by running RemoteAgentInstaller 2020.4.1. (Run installation again without executing the uninstall.)

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