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Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0

Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0 is a Generally Available (GA) release that introduces several new features and improvements.

When you are ready to deploy Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0:

Current update

For information on the current updated release of Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0, see Updates for Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0.

Key features

Release highlights include:

  • The Topologies feature allows you to view alerts and Situations according to the relationships that are important to you. Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0 supports multiple topologies, so different teams can have their own topological view. See Topology Overview for more information.

  • Alert Analyzer (Entropy) enables you to visualize and understand the impact of entropy values in Moogsoft Enterprise and adjust them to effectively reduce operational noise. See Configure Entropy Generation and Configure Entropy Thresholds with Alert Analyzer for more information.

  • WorkFlow Engine contains improvements to the Sweep Up Filter and the ability to invoke specific alert and Situation workflows outside the usual message chain.

  • The Visualize feature is now GA. See UI improvements for further details.

  • Moogsoft Enterprise now logs details of user sessions and authentication, authorization changes, and configuration changes.

  • New integrations for PagerDuty, Opsgenie, AWS Firelens, and Moogsoft Express and improved integrations for JIRA Software and xMatters.

Topologies

Moogsoft Enterprise can cluster alerts into Situations based on the topological relationships between the alerts. You can create multiple topologies using the Topologies API and/or the Topology Loader utiilty.

You can use the clone and replace endpoints and methods in the Topologies API and the Graph Topology module to clone an active topology, make changes to the inactive clone, and then replace the active topology with the updated version. This means that you do not need to take your topologies offline in order to update them.

You can cluster alerts in a single topology. You can also cluster alerts in several topologies from a single Recipe. You may find this useful if you have split a single large topology into several smaller topologies, and you do not want to create a Recipe for each.

The Graph Analyser process automatically calculates the Vertex Entropy for all nodes in your topologies. If you want to use Vertex Entropy to cluster alerts, define a topology filter in your Recipe configuration and use Vertex Entropy as a trigger, seed alert, or exclusion filter.

For more information, see Topology Overview.

Alert Analyzer (Entropy)

Entropy is a measure of how unexpected or unpredictable an event or an alert is. If you use the new Alert Analyzer feature, each alert is assigned a numeric entropy value to indicate how common or unusual the words in certain attributes are.

The Alert Analyzer enables you to visualize and understand the benefits of using entropy to reduce operational noise. It enables you to set reasonable entropy values that reduce operational noise without omitting alerts of interest. You can set an entropy threshold value or percentage and see the impact. You can set a global default entropy threshold and you can set specific entropy thresholds for specific managers.

The interactive entropy threshold graphs show a summary of the distribution of alerts in the system, by entropy value. You can see how many alerts exist with a given entropy value, and how many exist below a given entropy value. You can select an entropy value and review it to ensure you are including and excluding the appropriate alerts.

For more information, see Configure Entropy to Reduce Operational Noise.

Moogsoft Add-ons improvements

Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0 includes all Workflow Engine updates up to and including v2.0. See Moogsoft Add-ons for more information.

The following Workflow Engine improvements are included in v8.0:

  • The sweep up filter now excludes closed alerts and Situations.

  • The sweep up filter now supports an optional relative time window, which filters objects updated or created within a specified timeframe.

  • Alert Inform workflows: You can now invoke a specific alert workflow outside of the alert workflow engine chain.

  • Situation Inform workflows: You can now invoke a specific Situation workflow outside of the Situation workflow engine chain.

  • You can now search for workflows in the UI.

  • You can create a new Workflow Engine to trigger workflows based upon Situation actions. See Create a Situation Action Workflow Engine.

Cookbook and Recipe improvements

We've made the following improvements to Cookbooks and Recipes in v8.0:

  • You can now restore an earlier version of a Cookbook or Recipe. See Restore a Cookbook or Recipe for more information.

  • You can now configure a Recipe to cluster alerts by topology.

Integrations additions and improvements

The following integrations are new in v8.0:

  • PagerDuty: Enables bidirectional communication between Moogsoft Enterprise and PagerDuty.

  • AWS Firelens: Enables you to route logs from ECS containers to Moogsoft Enterprise.

  • Opsgenie: Enables bidirectional communication between Moogsoft Enterprise and Opsgenie.

  • Moogsoft Express Polling: Enables Moogsoft Enterprise to collect alert data from one or more Moogsoft Express systems.

  • Moogsoft Express Webhook: Posts data to Moogsoft Enterprise when an alert occurs in Moogsoft Express.

The following integrations have been improved in v8.0:

  • JIRA Software: All services assigned to a Situation are now linked with the JIRA ticket as components. Services and components are in sync. Workflows are now bidirectionally synced between Moogsoft Enterprise and JIRA so a change in ticket status in one system is reflected in the other.

  • xMatters: The previous xMatters integration has been deprecated and replaced with a new version that is more straightforward to configure and provides some additional features.

You can now perform the following actions on an integration's data mapping screen in the UI:

  • Specify the current time in agent time mapping, available for all monitoring integrations.

  • View unmapped custom info fields and map them if required.

  • Map to a specified location in an array.

  • Map fields with default values.

  • Unmap custom info fields.

We've made the following general improvements to integrations in v8.0:

  • Brokers and UI integrations can now communicate via websockets instead of just on RabbitMQ. This allows cloud customers using the UI to configure integrations with an on-premise data source. Proxy support is available for outbound connections.

  • Moogsoft Bridge is a new replacement or alternative to the Message Bus Cache LAM (mooms_cache_lam). It pushes events and messages from a local RabbitMQ cluster to the Message Bus, without requiring an inbound connection to the customers on-premise environment or local databases.

  • After upgrading integrations (RPM or Tarball) to v8.0, any UI integrations and brokers that were running on v7.3.x automatically update. Integrations that cannot be upgraded display as deprecated (xMatters, Dynatrace Synthetic).

  • The Integrations API now requires the graze_login permission.

UI improvements

We've made the following improvements to the the UI:

Visualize

The Visualize feature is now GA. The Visualize tab in Situation Rooms allows administrators and implementers to see:

  • The Cookbook and Recipe used to create the Situation.

  • A visual representation of the similarity of the alerts within the Situation to the reference alert.

  • A list of all the associated alerts in the Situation.

We've made the following additions to the feature:

  • Once you adjust the slider values you can now click a button to save the changes directly to the Cookbook Recipe that generated the Situation.

  • When multiple alerts are represented by a single dot, the alert details panel now displays all matched alerts when you click on the centre of the graphic. New tabs allow you to move between the alerts.

  • Alerts that are grayed out when you adjust the similarity threshold are now also filtered out of the alert list. Alerts are only filtered out when they are grayed out in ALL diagrams.

  • You can now adjust Visualize diagrams by clicking and dragging the threshold boundary ring.

  • Alert fields used for Situation clustering are now displayed first in the Visualize alert list. The clustered alert columns' colours also match those of their respective graphs.

  • The Visualize tab now automatically updates when new alerts are added to a Situation.

  • The reference alert is now pinned to the top of the Visualize alert list and highlighted with an orange marker.

  • The fields represented as diagrams in the Visualize tab now appear at the top of the alert details pane, in the same colours as the diagram.

  • A vertical line on the diagram slider now identifies the previous Recipe threshold value, if it has changed since the Situation was created.

See Review and Adjust Clustering Settings with Situation Visualization for more information.

UX improvements

We've made the following improvements to the user experience:

  • Alert and Situation lists:

    • Situation preview settings are now retained if you navigate away from the Situation list and then back to it.

    • Default column ordering for Situation and alert lists has changed, and some column names have changed.

    • The display of filter options on a Situation list has been improved when split pane view is in use.

  • Selective copy:

    • You can now copy dialog selections by pressing <Enter> as an alternative to clicking <Ok>. To quit you can use the Escape key or click <Cancel>.

    • The function now retains your last selection. Checkboxes now default to unchecked instead of checked.

    • You can now trigger selective copy with the Shift key plus a Hotkey set to Copy. By default the Copy Hotkey is “C”.

  • You can now scroll the left hand side navigation and the main area of the UI independently.

Historic data retention improvements

We've made the following improvements to the retention of historic data:

  • The new database split configurer utility replaces the database split enabler utility. The database split configurer is now always enabled by default, and cannot be turned off.

  • The active database now retains event and snapshot data for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, the Housekeeper Moolet removes the event and snapshot data from the active database. You can only access this event and snapshot data from the historic database after this point.

See Configure Historic Data Retention for more information.

Platform and security improvements

These improvements enhance performance and security and make High Availability (HA) deployments more reliable:

  • We've enabled audit logging for events related to user sessions, system configuration changes and user permissions changes.

  • In distributed systems, the Controller now decides which instances to activate and deactivate for manual failover.

  • REST-based LAMs now run as active/active in HA deployments by default.

  • UI integrations and backend LAMs no longer require a database connection. States are now stored by the Controller.

  • You can now configure the Toolrunner SSH port for server tools.

  • Upgraded components: OpenJDK 11.0.6, nine dependencies updated to resolve Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs).

Deprecation notices

See Deprecation Notice: Self Monitoring Controls for a list of deprecated features in Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0.

Known issues

See Known Issues for a description of problems and defects Moogsoft has identified at the time of the Moogsoft Enterprise v8.0 release.

Release date

May 14th, 2020.

For information on previous releases, see Moogsoft Releases.

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