Sometimes it’s the little things that make life better. Operations Bridge (OpsBridge) 2023.05 is packed with little things that improve observability, simplify use, strengthen security, and cut costs. In this post, I’ll cover a few that caught my eye: 

1. Reduced On-Prem Footprint (Operations Bridge – SaaS)

We’ve removed the need for Operations Bridge Manager (OBM) for most on-prem use cases, making it significantly easier to manage OpsBridge and reduce deployment costs. If you looked at OpsBridge SaaS in the past but thought there was still too much in your data center to move, this change is for you. 

OpsBridge sends commands, called policies, to agents that run on the host. The policies tell the agent what to monitor. Previously, policies had to come from an on-prem OBM server. In this release, we reworked our small monitoring edge component to pass those policies from the OBM in the cloud to the agents on prem. Your on-prem hardware footprint (costs) shrink and with one less item to manage (we do it for you), your job is a whole lot easier. 

2. Configuration Management System (CMS) HTML UI (Operations Bridge Suite)

Topology is a crucial component of observability. It allows you to visualize which component impacts a service or application. The OBM installer now includes a web-based UI for CMS, so you don’t have to install (and use) the local client separately. One less download and install for your users. 

3. Operations Console Favorites (Operations Bridge Suite)

A new Favorites feature makes frequently used actions easier to find. And it caused me to wonder what application first implemented Favorites. If you know, please put it in the comments. In any case, OBM now lets you mark an action as a Favorite.

Figure 1. Favorite frequently used actions in the Operations Console.  

4. Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 (Operations Agent)

TLS 1.3 increases communication security between OBM and Operations Agent 12.4. It is also faster than the previous version because the TLS handshake is faster.  

5. Reporting Enhancements (OPTIC Data Lake Reporting)

New template reports make it possible to quickly observe everything that’s going on. We also added more attributes to the event schema and a new event annotation schema for reporting that is feature-equivalent to OBR data. Moving from Operations Bridge Reporter (OBR) to OPTIC Data Lake Reporting is easier than ever.  

6. OPTIC One Flex Designer (OPTIC Data Lake Reporting)

Flex Designer, the report builder for native data reporting in the OPTIC Data Lake, removes the need to use SQL. Previously, you had to write SQL statements to select the data to report on. Now you select data via table browsing, which is easier for those who aren’t skilled in or don’t know SQL. 

7. Improved Automated Installation (Operations Bridge Suite)

The AppHub already installed the OpsBridge schema in the OPTIC Data Lake. Now AppHub can automatically create the Operations Bridge schema if you choose an Oracle database rather than running a separate script. 

8. Guided Install (Operation Bridge Suite)

We’ve added a guided install for low-footprint deployments and Operations Bridge + Network Operations Management (NOM) deployments with the shared OPTIC Data Lake. Our goal: Make everything extra easy. 

Want to dig deeper into all these little but powerful improvements? My colleague Irina is posting a technical What’s New series. Her first post is What’s New in Operations Bridge Manager and SiteScope 2023.05. 

Events

• On-demand: Operations Bridge 2023.05 Release Readiness Webinar
• On-demand: Operations Bridge Refresh 2023
• On-demand: Operations Bridge 2022.05 – Has Observability, More SaaS

Read all our news at the Operations Bridge blog.

Related items

• Operations Bridge – SaaS: Automated discovery, monitoring, and automation
• Operations Bridge Technology Integrations eBook
• What is AIOps

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