Geneos Upgrade Notes

Overview

This document provides information about the product changes that can affect upgrading from one version of Geneos to another.

To learn more about the supported Geneos versions and new features in the Geneos 5.x release, see the following documents:

Upgrade to Geneos 5.0

Important

  • Support for Geneos 3.x ceases on 30th April 2020. We strongly advise you to upgrade to version 4.x or newer as soon as possible.
  • From the release of Geneos 5.0, there will be no interoperability with other Geneos components older than version 3.6. In order to successfully deploy or upgrade to Geneos 5.x in a staged manner, you must first ensure that no other connecting Geneos components are older than version 3.6. This change is a result of the removal of LZO compression support in the inter-component EMF2 communication protocol.

If you have any question or concerns, please contact ITRS Support.

Netprobe

The Hardware plug-in now uses a new method of obtaining memoryAvailable and memoryAvailablePct for Linux platforms. The metrics are now based on the same calculation Linux uses to calculate the memAvailable field in /proc/meminfo. For more information, see the Hardware Plug-in documentation.

Ensure that any affected Gateway rules and thresholds are reviewed.

Gateway

Gateway 5.0 cannot publish data to Gateway Hub 1.4 or older versions. This is due to the changes in the publishing format in order to improve performance.

Gateway Setup Editor now enables the Simplified Comments by default. With simplifiedComments enabled, GSE removes all icons that indicate comments. You can only add, edit, or remove comments on named components in the Navigation panel.

The API for centralised configuration has changed since Early Access. Upgrade to Gateway 5.0 to use the centralised configuration with Gateway Hub 1.6 and above. For more information, see Centralised Gateways User Guide.

Active Console

Active Console 5.0 now supports a new light theme user interface. The Look and Feel in the Advanced settings has been removed.

Platforms and settings changes

Beginning with version 5.0, these Gateway settings are deprecated:

  • Managed Entity > Banner (Advanced tab)
  • Sampler > Publish (Visibility tab)

Changes to default Gateway configuration in version 5.0:

  • DatabaseLogging > logNetprobeSampleTimeForDataItems default is now True. 
  • Actions > action > sharedLibrary > runThreaded default is now True.
  • Effects > effect > sharedLibrary > runThreaded default is now True.

Upgrade to Geneos 4.11

In the Gateway, the behaviour of the _COMMENT environment variable has changed for actions fired by the unassignment of a data item. Previously, the comment provided when the item was assigned was placed in the _COMMENT environment variable for both assignment and unassignment events. It is now possible to configure Gateways to require comments for both assignment and unassignment events. This means for actions fired by unassignment events, the comment provided when the item is unassigned is placed in the _COMMENT environment variable. The comment that was provided when the item was originally assigned is now moved to a new environment variable called _PREVIOUS_COMMENT.

Improved the Context Sensitive Help (CSH) for Gateway Setup Editor (Gateway Setup Editor) that is based on the specific content available online. Context sensitive help will launch your default browser to access the content online. To know more about this, see Host the documentation locally to use GSE context-sensitive help in Gateway Setup Editor.

Upgrade to Geneos 4.7

Geneos 4.7.x release introduces changes to the way arguments are parsed to Commands, Actions, and Effects.

These changes were required to provide consistent behaviour and understanding across both Netprobe and Gateway to simplify user experience.

We strongly recommend you check the configuration and behaviour of any Commands, Actions, and Effects before deploying to production.

For more information, see Commands, Actions and Effects.

Upgrade to Geneos 4.0

The following changes are introduced to Geneos 4.0.x packages:

  • Name of the package file is geneos-<component>-<version>.<platform>.<tar.gz/zip>. 
    • For example, geneos-netprobe-4.0.0.solaris-x64.tar.gz.
  • Packages contains a root directory <component>.
  • Libraries are located within a sub-directory named lib or lib64: