Chat transcript from CA UIM Office Hours: A Live Online Chat [March 2016] - Update on CA Unified Infrastructure Management 8.4 which took place on March 3, 2016.
Melanie Giuliani to Everyone: Hi everyone! Welcome to Office Hours for CA UIM. Thanks for joining! We'll be getting started at the top of the hour.
Melanie Giuliani to Everyone: Alright, let's get started! Please start asking your questions! Don't forget to select "send to: everyone" before sending.
Mark to Everyone: When will the next version be released and what is targeted to be in it?
Santhosh Shankar to Everyone: Is there any plan around how to improve some of the gaps in the next release -- FCE, AWS,
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Mark We just release 8.4 on February 16th...and we are in planning for the next one. Plan in for a fall release, but we haven't locked down all of the features going in. That will get decided over the next couple of weeks.
Melanie Giuliani to Everyone: @Mark - here is a link to our webcast which was held on Tuesday that covers the next release - 8.4. https://communities.ca.com/community/ca-infrastructure-management/blog/2016/03/02/webcast-recap-update-on-ca-unified-infrastructure-management-84
robert perez to Everyone: when will we be able to report out on that what is being monitored from a thresold perspective across all probes. This is a big need for us
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: When will we be able to delete inventory from the GUI?
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Santhosh we have some big plans for future releases amazon web services.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: What is the status of Admin Console - I heard it was getting a work over.
Tim Curry to Everyone: New Monitoring Configuration Service, does this mean configurations will be stored in a centralized DB table(s) for probes and individual devices/servers/hosts?
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Danny K, I am the CA Product Owner responsible for grooming the upcoming Device Delete feature in UIM. I don't have a specific date when this functionality will be released, but I am happy to converse with you on a Webex and show you what we are planning. For instance, we have initial mockups of what we expect the GUI to look like.
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: What probes are supported by the new Monitoring Configuration Service?
Gene Howard to Everyone: @Tim... Yes these are now being stored in the new tables SSRV2....
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: Question, was there any improvement to the "Group Trend Reports" creation steps in 8.4? Meaning its very tedious to create these reports as you can only add 1 metric at a time. Was this GUI improved ?
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Danny K, please send me an email and I would be happy to work with you more.
Ashley Pietersen to Everyone: will old customer dashboard still working under UIM 8.4?
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: @Matt Caraway, please include me on that new Delete Devices in UIM when you have your reviews. TY.
Gene Howard to Everyone: @Ashley.. Sorry no. The old portlets are deprecated in 8.4 and no longer work
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @robert - Regarding reporting on what is being monitored, we have plans for this in our backlog, but not in 8.4. It is actually somewhat dependent on MCS, since it provides a centralized place where these configurations live.
Gary Moore to Everyone: Any chance of seeing a more robust Probe Configuration Report?
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: Is there is simple list of the deprecated probes in 8.4 so it's understood what needs to be replaced before upgrading?
Kent Meyer to Everyone: We are a heavy linux shop running JVMs. Are there any plans to fix the known issues with the jvm_monitor probe?
Santhosh Shankar to Everyone: @Matthew.. can we involve few large MSPs in the Beta program ? for feedback? they give us recurring UIM business Y-O-Y
robert perez to Everyone: do you have any plans to improve the Azure probe?
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: What probes populate the Interfaces Tab on a selected device within the UMP USM?
Terry McElvenny to Everyone: @Daniel Blanco - The probes supported in MCS are apache 1.62
cdm 5.61-MC
dirscan 3.14
dns_response 1.68
email_response v1.44
logmon v3.54
mysql v1.48
ntevl v4.21
ntperf & ntperf64 v2.02
ntservices v3.24
oracle v4.91
processes v4.01
sqlserver v4.93
url_response v4.22
robert perez to Everyone: when will MCS support the network probes?
Santhosh Shankar to Everyone: We are also seeing lot of business impacted by limitations in the FCE functionality .. can we get the basic correlation to scale to a larger limit ?
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Rob...Yes, admin console is being completely rewritten. It's nearly complete and we expect to be able to release it off cycle in long before the next release.
David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to Everyone: @Daniel The actual interface list can be populated by snmpcollector and/or discovery_agent. However, only snmpcollector will actually populate the values for each interface.
Kent Meyer to Everyone: What is the status of EMS?
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: Thanks Robert!!!! good to hear!
Ashley Pietersen to Everyone: So not only the old Dashboard Designer is finished also the possibility to present old custom Dashboards?!
Gene Howard to Everyone: @Danny here is the link from the documentation: https://docops.ca.com/display/UIM84/Deprecated+UMP+Portlets
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: Any word on when we lose FLASH, the limitations on alarm counts are really affecting my use of UIM?
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Santhosh, Of course we also want MSPs in the beta program. Several have been used to leverage early discussions. I'll work with you to vet for specific customers
Tyler Peterson to Everyone: @Robert the support for network probes is on the roadmap for next and future releases in a phased manner.
Ashley Pietersen to Everyone: but flash is still avaivailble for USM and other portlets. Strange choices
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: How to deploy "nisapi_service_host" to the Service_Host probe?
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: Just drag to the robot/hub?
Gene Howard to Everyone: @kent EMS is rolled out in basic in 8.4 and can be setup manually currently
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: I'm integrating 8.4 with Spectrum 10.1 and need to deploy the new 8.04 of nisapi
Ray Carter to Everyone: is there a beta for admin console rewrite?
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Gary Moore. We are looking to revamp the auditing probe and roll it into the new EMS in the future. We have some other high-priority asks on the list first, so this will not be done very soon.
Gene Howard to Everyone: @Ashley Yes currently in 8.4 flash is still used in many portlets
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: I'd like to be in that admin console rewrite beta especially if it isn't flash.
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Ray, yes there is a beta program for Admin Console 2. I am leading this program. I have demos to show today and also working software that we can test in customer lab environments.
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Ray, I would be very interested in talking with you more about this.
Nghia Van to Everyone: Is there a way to do a fresh install of UIM and then migrate historical data from an older version (7.5)?
Paul Breheny to Everyone: @Rob, here is the documentation for the nisapi_service_host: documentation link I have for that is below:
http://www.ca.com/us/support/ca-support-online/product-content/knowledgebase-articles/tec1254768.aspx
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Nghia, no there is not a way to migrate old (7.5) data to a new UIM
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: Thanks Paul, that's the page I was looking for
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: I'll point that out to support...
Bart Beeman to Everyone: Will there still be duplicate entries in the database if the device is discovered from different origins?
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Daniel..regarding Group Trend, the UI has not changed. Do you have suggestions for selecting metrics?
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Kent Meyer The EMS probe is available in UIM 8.4 it is still under development and there is another major release coming with an simple rule editor. I just got a briefing on the new UI this morning, and it looks very promising. Are you interested in learning more? If so. Please email me.
Paul Breheny to Everyone: @Rob, glad to help.
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Ray, please email me if you would like to talk about Admin Console 2, or even UIM Device Delete
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Paul, another questiion if I may…there's a way to see what pkgs are installed in a probe, I forget how to show that, perhaps only specific to the service_host ? want to check that 8.04 got applied correctly
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: and do I need to remove 8.01?
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Rob Borowicz. FYI. We are also updating the integration. It will be released very soon. Watch for the announcement.
David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to Everyone: @Bart Nothing significant has changed with regards to correlation. However, discovery correlation is a bit more complex than just origins. MAC addresses and FQDNs, for example do not take origins into account since server1.xyz.com is a very specific piece of information and we can make a reasonable assumption that server1.xyz.com from ORIGIN1 is the same device as server1.xyz.com from ORIGIN2. In that respect, the more information you can provide to a probe publishing discovery information, the more likely you are to have those devices correlate into a single entry.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: saw that in the webcast this week
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Rob, Service Host is going to be sunsetted in UIIM 8.5. The behavior of mon_services and admin console 1 living in that probe will not maintian.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: the'll be a 8.41
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: and spec 10.01 ?
Ashley Pietersen to Everyone: I really like to know more about the roadmap of the new Dashboard Designer. I think it is far from finished and I need to know if it will be further deveoped. In fact I like to contact mr Robert Vacante by phone or email. Please let me know what the contact details are. regards Ashley
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: I just had to reboot my hub cause service_host was not responding
Paul Breheny to Everyone: @rob, to see the installed packages, on the system where it's installed, go to the controller -> Status -> Installed Packages
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: that's it, thanks!
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Rob Borowitz. What are you asking? They'll be a 8.41 and spec 10.01 ? Is that in reference the the integration with UIM and Spectrum?
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Jim, Yes
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Danny...re: Flash, we continue to work on moving off of Flash to HTML. For alarms, changing to remove limitations on alarm counts is being investigated right now.
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: @Robert Vacante, regarding Group Trend can you email me and i'll discuss this with you. Its very painful to create these reports as you have to add 1metric at a time and usually we want to add all Metrics of the same type for all the machines. Shoudl be a much easier way to tdo this. Also it clears out ALL the selections you made if you change the metric type.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: Looks like nis_api_service is not 8.40
Torsten Schwarz to Everyone: As far as I know there is a new bidirectional interface planned between UIM and Spectrum. Do you know roughly when it will be released?
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: @David LeDeaux - Why doens't the net_traffic and interface_traffic probe populate the Interfaces tab ? why does it have to be the snmp collector probe?
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Rob Borowitz. The integration will be between Spectrum 10.1.1 and a probe called the Spectrum Gateway probe (spectrumgtw) version 8.4.0.1c. That probe should run on UIM 8.4, but I can't guarantee it.
Ashley Pietersen to Everyone: @Robert Vacante: I really like to know more about the roadmap of the new Dashboard Designer. I think it is far from finished and I need to know if it will be further deveoped. In fact I like to contact mr Robert Vacante by phone or email. Please let me know what the contact details are. regards Ashley
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Daniel...Group Trend...I have emailed you.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: Thanks Jim - timeframe ? (about)
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Torsten Schwarz: It is very soon. Sorry, I can not provide a date due to policy.
Tim Curry to Everyone: Is there a good video or instructions on snmpcollector, we have had trouble moving towards this model?
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Rob Borowitz: It is very soon. Sorry, I can not provide a date due to policy.
Daniel Okine to Everyone: @Daniel, We are planning to EOL the legacy network probes (interface_traffic etc.), so the forward direction is with SNMPCollector.
- hp.meyer to Everyone: When will easy HA Support for UMP available ?
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @everyone. For more infomration on why we are restricted at providing dates on releases, please see my blog on the subject. https://communities.ca.com/community/ca-infrastructure-management/blog/2015/07/14/the-latest-unified-infrastructure-management-roadmap-with-dates
Daniel Okine to Everyone: @Tim Please send me email and I will get you the links for videos
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Jim - Know the policy well - not trying to make you commit
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Tim_Curry - I'm with you on snmpcollector. a beast and I could use help with
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Tim_Curry BTW - were you in Rocky Horror?? JK...
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: I know we don't have office hours for probes, but how do we go about getting more in depth information on probes. The Probe AC and IM manuals basically say click 1 to click one, and don't get into enough depth on subjects like logmon and netconnect and icmp and lync?
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @hp.meyer...we have some techniques that have been used for HA with UMP. Contact me and I can provide route your request.
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Ashley...re: Dashboard Designer, I can be reached at *********
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: Count me in on the UMP HA concerns.
Raj Sundaram to Everyone: @Danny - this is also the office hours for probes. What information are u looking for specifically ?
Daniel Okine to Everyone: @Rob Borowicz please contact me offline as well. I will send you any videos and provide any help you need
Tim Curry to Everyone: @Rob No Rocky Horror, just a simple nerd lol
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Daniel - Thanks will do!
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Tim_Curry - I imagine you get that a lot?
Paul Breheny to Everyone: @rob, we are all blubbering over that one.
Ray Carter to Everyone: I had an issue with snmpcollector/admin console where I was attempting to update a template, but the changes would not save. I heard that it might be better to only apply new templates and not modify previously created templates. Is that recommended?
- hp.meyer to Everyone: Thanks Robert, i sent a mail to you
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: @Raj Mostly looking for detailed information with examples of using the probe for different purposes. For example in lync, how to setup an SBA differently from setting up Mediation server, vs setting up Edge server for monitoring, for logmon, more examples of actually using it in a production environment, for Netconnect, it seems to me that UIM uses it behind the scenes and I'd like to use it or the ICMP tool too if I could find the docs on supporting other application ports, etc. Just more meat to the documentation.
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @All, we have been working hard as an R&D Team to improve some of the concerns that have been surfaced with Admin Console version 1. We have a beta version of Admin Console 2 which we are seeking customer feedback. We have improvements in aspects of usability, performance and scale to name a few. For anyone interested in receving a demo and even taking the product for a drive, please send me an email. My email is xxxxxxxx. Look forward to hearing from you!
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @matt - on it now
Raj Sundaram to Everyone: @Danny .. I like the suggestions. I will take this up with the doc team. If u have other ideas send them my way.
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: If you need test subjects who provide candid feedback please include me :-) Thank you
robert perez to Everyone: @matt.caraway email sent on admin console2 thanks
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @DBlanco, always interested in honest feedback.
Bart Beeman to Everyone: The new version of the CDM probe, 5.61, always prompts to save changes, even when changes were not made, when the GUI is closed. In previous versions it only prompted to save changes when changes were made. Was that change intentionally made in 5.61?
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Robert and others, got several requests for Admin Console. I'll get some meetings set up.
Mark to Everyone: As I understand it, you are working on Performance Enhancements and Scale with the SNMP collection. Was that released in the 8.4 verison or is it targeted for a future release?
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: GREAT!
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: Admin Console 1.0 does not like me
Daniel Okine to Everyone: @Mark, this was not part of 8.4. It will be released in a phased approach...
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @ALL - I put in a Idea to create out-of-box templates in applicable probes to monitor CA tools
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: IE: Spectrum (DB, Tomcat) SOI, UIM itself
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: any progress?
Raj Sundaram to Everyone: @Bart .. is this using the POC gui or the IM gui ?
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: We use the APMGTW probe to send metrics to Introscope
Daniel Okine to Everyone: @Mark, We will have SNMP 3.2 coming out next, planning for this month (March)
Raj Sundaram to Everyone: @Bart - POC = Web Console, IM = Thick Client
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Mark, there will also be improvements in Discovery Server Scale to pair with the new versions of SNMP Collector. Both probes have had a strong focus on scale improvements. Look for new versions of the probes to be released in the short future.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: sometimes the flow fails and we would like a monitor on that and other key probe status
Bart Beeman to Everyone: @Raj using the IM gui
Ray Carter to Everyone: Has anyone transitioned to MCS in 8.4? Is any rework required if you are moving from 8.31, other than building the new profiles in MCS?
Raj Sundaram to Everyone: @Bart - I will find out and let u know.
Terry McElvenny to Everyone: @Ray - A clarifying question, are you using SSR with 8.31?
Mark to Everyone: Thanks @Matthew and @Daniel. I'm new to UIM. Are the probes released at different times that the main software? (I'm currently an eHealth guy trying to understand how the parts are released).
Raj Sundaram to Everyone: @Mark .. probes can be released at different times than the platform.
Raj Sundaram to Everyone: @Mark .. the goal is to do so but there are times when the releases are lined up if there are dependencies with platform services.
Mark to Everyone: yeah @Raj!
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: What is 'trellis' ?
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: No right-click-->product info
Nils Valentin to Everyone: We are on 8.2 and I see a looong list of known issues for 8.4. What's the preferred upgrade path , waiting for 9.x ?
Terry McElvenny to Everyone: @Ray Carter - Clarifying question for you MCS, were you using SSR with UIM 8.31?
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Rob...re: monitoring CA tools...We have self-monitoring on the backlog for UIM, but monitoring of other CA tools is not. I'll look at the idea (and would encourage others to vote on it if they would like to see this too...vote counts are a primary consideration for us!)
Bart Beeman to Everyone: Are alarms dropped/not displayed in the USM if they exceed a number of characters? We have some alarms that display fine in the Alarm console in the IM and deprecated Alarm console in the UMP, but they do not display in the USM.
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: Maybe I missed this but the UMP is tranistioning to HTML5 correct? It really stinks that I can't view UMP on my tablet while on the train ride home.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Robert Vacante - Thanks!
Ray Carter to Everyone: @Terry - We are in the middle of implementation - I'm not familiar with SSR, so I would say no
David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to Everyone: @Bart this might have something to do with internationalization since those are stored in two different fields. You can disable internationalization in nas, and it should fix the issue for new incoming alarms
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Rob Borowicz, it is a service container. We needed a way to continue to increase our number of services without running each on its own JVM. We released three services on Trellis in 8.4, and many more will be run there in the future. We are also working on some enhancements to make it easier to mange services in Trellis so they look more like a full-fledged probe in Admin Console. It will help us drop our RAM requirements in the future, and it has been shown to dramatically increase service performance.
robert perez to Everyone: what is SSR?
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Rob...wanna post the link to the idea so others can find it easily?
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Dan, allowing for configuration of the product using mobile devices has been a focus of ours while we develop AC2. HTML5 implementation of USM is a proposed item for a future release.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Robert - going there... once sec
robert perez to Everyone: Thanks
David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to Everyone: @Bart actually, as I look at the schema, this might not fix the issue. The messages field is limited to 4000 chars and the i18n field is able to store much more
David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to Everyone: @Bart can you ping me offline and I can dig into this more
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: Question I noticed that there is no syncronization between the UMP Maintenace and the IM Maintenace for a robot. There is no audit history noted if the maintenance is set thru UMP for a robot.
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: this caused us issues in tracking down who set robots into maintenace. and we missed alerts.
Terry McElvenny to Everyone: @Ray - You are correct, moving from 8.31 to 8.4 you will only need to build the new profiles for the groups of devices you wish to monitor.
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: Speaking about Maintenance, any chance it'll be upgraded in the future to do repeating schedules by dynamic group rather than static device. It was quite a letdown when we figured out repeating maintenance didn't work for device lists that changed quarterly.
Bart Beeman to Everyone: @David LeDeaux - sure, thanks
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Nils...re: 8.4 known issues: 8.4 had a very strong quality push and we made a significant number of enhancements that directly address customer found issues. That was the primary reason it shipped later than planned. 8.4 is a solid release and I would certainly encourage you to upgrade. (Although 9.0 will have even more...we're constantly improving.)
Danny Kusnierz to Everyone: Kudos to the team for performance enhancements in 8.4, my users are liking the speed.
Jim Perkins to Everyone: @Danny Kusnierz: Thanks, that is great to know.
Rob Borowicz to Everyone: @Robert Vacante - Searching Ideas, can't find mine...
Nils Valentin to Everyone: @rob is 8.31 recommended upgrade first or directly from 8.2 to 8.4 ?
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Nils 8.2->8.4 is just fine
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Nils, it is tested and supported strongly
Melissa Potvin to Everyone: OK, we are done for today. Thank you for joining office hours. The transcript will post to the community as always.
Daniel Blanco to Everyone: OH! Almost forgot but any improvements with regards to reporting so that where it will utilize the QoS daily rollup data? Meaning when running reports to look at the Hourly or Daily QoS rolled up data by the data_engine
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: Thanks for joining all! Thanks for your time.
Gary Moore to Everyone: How about 7.6 to 8.4 is that a direct upgrade?
Robert Vacante to Everyone: @Gary - No...7.6 is not direct to 8.4.
Matthew Caraway to Everyone: @Daniel it is in the backlog, we do plan to improve the roll ups of metrics and reporting.