We are pleased to announce the availability of OpenTextTM AI Operations Management 24.4, our AIOps platform. OpenTextTM Operations Bridge is now OpenTextTM AI Operations Management. We are simplifying our portfolio and renaming products to make it easier for you to find and understand our solutions.
This release brings the new versions of the Operations Bridge Classic, Container and SaaS deployments, with numerous new features and usability improvements. This blog article focuses on the new releases of the classic products Operations Bridge Manager (OBM) including OpenText AI Operations Management with Aviator related features, Operations Agent (OA) and SiteScope.
Summary of changes
Operations Bridge Manager 24.4
In this release, we introduced numerous new features and enhancements such as:
- Enhanced dark theme support for OBM
- Synchronize downtimes between multiple OBM systems
- Access all versions of a policy in the Policy by Template Groups view
- Case insensitive search with regular expressions in event browser
- Enhanced troubleshooting support for OBM scripts
- Central license reporting
- Authorize RTSM view folders in OBM role editor
- CI resolution using tags
- Faster remediation of events:
- Create an instruction for similar events
- Create an instruction for similar events based on an Aviator conversation
- Attach the remediation conversation as an annotation to the event
- Upload your own knowledge to Aviator
Note: The new capabilities are available for all OBM deployment types (Classic, Containerized, SaaS). Aviator-related features require an Aviator license.
Operations Agent 12.27
This release provides new and changed features in several areas.
- Enhanced ASSD with interface details
- AES 256 protocol support for SNMPv3
- Executing scheduled tasks immediately after deployment
- User opc_op no longer created by default
- Detect cloud instance ID in AWS
- HTTP server in hpsensor is in line with other subagents
- Health view launches on policy overview by default
- Health monitoring of opcgeni
- Stream APPLICATION class metrics to OPTIC Data Lake
OpenText SiteScope 24.4
This release brings enhancements in several monitors:
- You can now monitor devices that require SNMP V3 SHA-2 authentication with Network Bandwidth Monitor, SNMP Monitor, and SNMP by MIB Monitors.
- You can monitor URLs that require two-way authentication (Mutual TLS/mTLS)
- You can monitor REST Web services that require specifying a payload for request and authentication
Details on the new OBM features
Enhanced dark theme support for OBM
After introducing dark mode for OBM as part of containerized OpsBridge and on SaaS in previous releases, this dark mode is now available for OBM classic UIs as well, including the Agent Health View.
It provides an eye friendly mode for low light environments, for example for NOCs.
Enabling the dark mode is configurable as a user setting. It is either possible to select a specific mode always running in dark mode, or it is possible to leverage a browser or OS controlled settings to leverage what is configured there and run in dark or light mode depending also on the time of day.
Figure 1: Example of an OBM page in dark mode
For more information, see the Settings page.
Synchronize downtimes between multiple OBM systems
It’s now possible to synchronize the complete downtime configuration between multiple OBM systems to ensure events from CIs in downtime are processed in the same way. Prerequisite is the execution of a topology sync. The downtime configuration consists of the configuration of the downtime itself and the configuration of the downtime behavior.
Selected downtime can be based on creation date or last modification time. Downtime behavior defines how events in a specific downtime or in a specific downtime category are being processed, e.g., whether they are closed immediately or whether some actions are run on them.
Both configuration data can now be transferred to other OBM systems using two tools:
opr-custom-config CLI for importing and exporting the downtime configuration and content packs for editing the downtime behavior.
Examples for opr-custom-config:
$opr-custom-config -export /tmp/config_sync.zip -type downtimes -from_time "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss“
$opr-custom-config -export /tmp/config_sync.zip -type d -ft "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss“
$opr-custom-config -import /tmp/config_sync.zip
Figure 2: Example of a content pack containing Downtime behaviors
These new features ensure consistency across the environment. It simplifies and automates the process, saving time and effort.
For more information see the section on opr-custom-config.
Access all versions of a policy in the Policy by Template Groups view
The Template Groups view now offers quick access to all versions of a policy. By managing versions directly within the group view, you can gain greater control over your policy templates, eliminating the need to navigate multiple views.
Linking to a template group is still on template level, not on specific version.
Figure 3: Quick access to all versions of a policy inside Template Groups UI
For more information, see the Policy Templates page.
Case insensitive search with regular expressions in Event Browser
The Event Browser supports case insensitive search with regular expressions.
Now you can define whether regular expressions are used for searching based on case sensitivity or insensitivity.
Figure 4: Example of a case insensitive regular expression search
For more information, see the Event browser page.
Enhanced troubleshooting support for OBM scripts
We now have an easier way to troubleshoot scripts that we use in various places on the OBM side. This is especially very helpful on the SaaS side.
You now have the option to launch an UI that allows you to monitor the contents of the script log files on a continuous basis in the browser. New entries to the script logs will automatically show up in this Log Viewer that you can launch now from this script management UIs.
It's available for all script types EPI, Custom Action, Forwarding, and time-based event automation scripts.
Figure 5: Script logs can now be monitored directly within OBM Script Admin UIs
In addition to its usage in a SaaS environment, it's also helpful for on-prem environments so that you don't need to log on to a system but just can have a look at the logs by launching this UI.
This UI is available for both classic and containerized OBM.
In addition, the option to download all the logs is still available if OBM is part of a containerized OpsBridge deployment..
For more information, see View script log messages.
Central License Reporting
There is a new option to do a consolidated license management across multiple OBMs using the Autopass License Server (APLS). This is supported for the new license types OpsB Premium, Ultimate and Premium SaaS.
The AutoPass License Server will be the central place for uploading and maintaining licenses. It's a web-based solution for managing your software product licenses and helps you organize and manage your product licenses. License keys will be uploaded to the central license server, from where OBM will download licenses and report license usage.
This allows you to have a centralized license usage report across all your OBM servers in Autopass. (The OBM server license report continues to show the licenses used for that specific OBM server).
Figure 6: Consolidated license usage report in Autopass License Server
Figure 7: License usage report in OBM, for a specific OBM server
For more information, see (Optional) Central License Reporting.
Authorize RTSM View Folders in OBM Role Editor
A simplified configuration of permissions for RTSM views is introduced.
For this a hierarchical permission management is provided, that gives the access to an RTSM folder and thereby the permissions for all the RTSM views within that folder. This is specifically helpful in SaaS as we do not expose the UCMDB user role editor to customers there.
Figure 8: Configure RTSM view permissions in in OBM Role Editor
For more information, see Manage roles.
CI resolution using tags
Tags for CIs, especially used in the cloud context, can now be configured to be considered for the CI resolution. A typical use case is that you have non-unique names for CIs, for which you use a tag to distinguish them and then do accurate CI resolution based on that.
If custom TQL is used for CI resolution, those tags would need to be added so that they are actually available for the CI resolver to evaluate.
Figure 9: Tag configuration in OBM CI Resolution Cache Modification Configuration
For more information, see CI Resolution.
Faster remediation of events
In this release we introduced several features to help you to remediate events quicker. Good instructions can help your operators to solve repeating problems quickly and correctly.
For this we made it easier to create instructions for similar events, right from the event browser. So far, a policy administrator had to be contacted and had to find the corresponding policy rule or potentially multiple rules that create similar events and then add instruction text to all rules.
Now your operators (given the corresponding permissions) can add instructions right from the event browser by selecting “Create Instruction” from the event context menu.
Furthermore, to help your operators to come up with a good instruction text, it is now possible to create an instruction based on an aviator conversation.
The results of an aviator conversation about a specific event can also be added as annotation – which is useful if an event needs to be escalated to another operator or ticketing system as it allows other operators to see what has already been discussed.
Create an instruction for similar events
You can click the new Create Instruction option from the event context menu:
Figure 10: New Create Instruction option in event context menu
You can then specify the instruction text and either use an event filter to assign the instruction to similar events that match that filter, or you can select “Similarity to reference event” – in which case similar events will be detected automatically.
Figure 11: Create Instruction dialog with option “Similarity to reference event” selected
For more information on this similarity scoring algorithm and the new instructions UI, please see Manage the instructions.
Create an instruction for similar events based on an Aviator conversation
To come up with a good instruction text, you can first start an aviator conversation and explore options to solve the problem with aviator.
At the end of the conversation, you can use the Summarize Instruction from conversation button to ask aviator to summarize the conversation and then click the Save last response as instruction button to use that summarization as starting point for your instruction text.
Figure 12: Aviator conversation with new buttons to create instructions and attach conversation
Attach the remediation conversation as an annotation to the event
Using the Attach conversation button, you can add the complete conversation as an annotation to the event. This allows other operators to see what has already been explored using aviator.
Figure 13: Annotation displaying aviator conversation
Upload your own knowledge to OpenText Aviator for AI Operations Management
So far Aviator came with some preconfigured knowledge about specific domains. Now you can upload your own knowledge, allowing Aviator to use this knowledge when answering questions. For more information, see Index external knowledge using IDOL connectors.
Details on the new Operations Agent features
Enhanced ASSD with interface details
The ASSD data is enhanced to include network interface related details. This enhancement avoids invalid interface CI merges.
For more information, see ASSD data for network interface.
The Mac addresses and network interfaces are filtered based on the OPC_ASSD_FILTER_IP variable.
For more information, see the OPC_ASSD_FILTER_IP variable in
Configuration Variables for the Operations Monitoring Component.
AES 256 protocol support for SNMPv3
The SNMPV3_ENCRYPTTYPE parameter additionally supports AES-256 privacy protocol. For more information, see Configuring the SNMP Trap Interceptor for SNMPv3 Traps and Enhancing Security Parameters to Perform SNMPv3 GET.
Executing scheduled tasks immediately after deployment
By default, the Operations Agent starts executing the scheduled action immediately after deployment of the policy, and then it executes at every interval. From this release, when the OPC_SCHED_TASK_RUN_AT_START variable is set to True, the Operations Agent executes the scheduled action immediately after the policy is deployed or redeployed.
For more information, see Config_Variable_Agent.
User opc_op no longer created by default
From this release, at the time of fresh installation, the opc_op user is not created. During the upgrade, the default user is removed if not being used. Set CREATE_DEFAULT_USER variable to True in the profile file to create opc_op user during a fresh install or retain opc_op user during an upgrade.
For more information, see Installing Operations Agent using Profile File.
Detect cloud instance ID in AWS
The cloud instance ID from AWS VMs can be detected in addition to the GCP and Azure cloud platforms. The detected cloud instance ID and the cloud provider details are populated under OPC_CLOUD_INSTANCE_ID and OPC_CLOUD_TYPE configurations respectively and are published via ASSD.
For more information, see Detect cloud instance id.
HTTP server in hpsensor is in line with other subagents
The hpsensor relied on third-party software for the HTTP server functionality. Hence, it caused a runtime dependency on OpenSSL libraries that had to be shipped with Operations Agent.
From this release, the dependency on third-party HTTP server software is eliminated. This brings in changes in the hpsensor configuration (port and ENFORCE_SERVER_SSL).
For more information, see Configuration Variables for the hpsensor Process and hpsensor.
Health view launches on policy overview by default
From this release, the default launch page of the Operations Agent Health View is the Policy Info page view. In earlier versions, the default launch page was the Node Info page view.
For more information, see Policy view.
Health monitoring of opcgeni
This feature enables health monitoring of the opcgeni subagent and policy health of its supported policy types. The detailed policy health drill down is available for the following policy types:
- Events from the Rest Web Service.
- Generic output from Rest Web Service (Pass Through).
The Operations Agent Health View displays the health status of opcgeni policies to monitor their execution status. It can also identify the policy failures and take necessary actions to resolve the failures. The error handling for incoming data and error reporting in System.txt has been improved.
For more information, see Health Monitoring Process and the Parameters Monitored.
Stream APPLICATION class metrics to OPTIC Data Lake
From this release, the OPTIC Reporting capability supports streaming of APPLICATION class metrics to OPTIC Data Lake.
For more information, see Enable System Metric Streaming to ODL.
Details on the new OpenText SiteScope features
Monitor devices that require SNMP V3 SHA-2 authentication
SiteScope now supports MD5, SHA, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 authentication algorithms when you enable SNMP V3 for Network Bandwidth Monitor, SNMP Monitor, and SNMP by MIB Monitors.
Monitor URLs that require two-way authentication (Mutual TLS/mTLS)
SiteScope now allows you to use mTLS for URL-based monitoring, that means for web pages that require two-way authentication to access a target over a secure (HTTPS) connection. mTLS is supported for URL monitor and URL Content monitor. See URL Monitor and URL content Monitor for more information.
Monitor REST Web services that require specifying a payload for request and authentication
For REST API Monitor, when the request type is POST, there was no way to provide a request body. Additionally, when using the authentication URL, there was no option to send multiple requests. Now, the REST API Monitor allows you to input a payload (POST data) for both the request and authentication. If the URL is for a POST request, you can enter the post variables as name=value pairs, one per line. See REST API Monitor for more information.
More Operations Bridge 24.4 release-related details are provided in the Operations Bridge Release Readiness Webinar. The slides and the recording are available on our Community page here.
We encourage you to try out our new features and enhancements! For further information on our offerings, visit the Operations Bridge product page, explore our documentation resources and check out our videos and blogs.
If you have feedback or suggestions, don’t hesitate to comment on this article below.
Explore the full capabilities of Operations Bridge by taking a look at these pages on our Practitioner Portal: Operations Bridge Manager, SiteScope, Operations Agent, Operations Connector (OpsCx), Operations Bridge Analytics, Application Performance Management (APM) and Operations Orchestration (OO).
Events
- On-demand: Operations Bridge 24.4 Release Readiness Webinar
- On-demand: Operations Bridge Refresh 2023
See all the OpenText events worldwide.
Read all our news at the Operations Bridge blog.
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