Geneos Upgrade Notes

Express Report

Beginning Geneos 5.8.x, the Express Reports feature of Gateway is no longer available.

This feature will continue to be available and supported for Geneos 5.7.x and older until its end of life (EOL) date on 31 December 2021.

Publisher plugin

The Publisher plugin Elasticsearch configuration schema has been refactored to support additional publishing destinations.

The plugin configuration prior to version 5.7.1 is not compatible with versions 5.7.1 and higher. We recommend that you update the configuration after upgrading to Geneos 5.7.1 and higher.

Hardware plugin

The following metrics in the Hardware plugin have been changed:

• ntpAvailability is now timeSyncSource.

• ntpLocalClockOffset is now timeSyncOffset.

For more information, see Hardware documentation.

IBM i plugin

Beginning Geneos 5.7.x, the severityCodeFilter metric and filters > queueNameFilter configuration in the IBM i Queue plugin have been deprecated.

The new filters for Queue library and Queue name replaces the filters > queueNameFilter.

Web Dashboard

Web Dashboard requires the fontconfig package to be installed in the system to start up. Beginning Geneos 5.7.x, Web Dashboard now uses Open Sans as its default font when a required font is not available in the system.

For more information, see Fontconfig dependency in Web Dashboard documentation.

Dynamic Entities

The new and simplified mapping configuration replaces the Dynamic Mapping Configuration. Any existing configurations using the previous setup will continue to work. However, we recommend you migrate to the new Dynamic Entities > Mapping:

• Dynamic entities > Mapping type > Entity timeout — the new default entity time out value is increased from 2 minutes to 1 hour.

• Dynamic entities > Mapping type > Stale data timeout — this is a new setting in this release to mark individual dataviews as containing stale data if the data has not been updated within the set timeout. The default is 2 minutes.

Gateway publishing to Gateway Hub

Beginning Geneos 5.7, Gateway supports publishing data to Gateway Hub without schema. This schema-less publishing of data from Gateways is supported beginning Gateway Hub 2.4.x.

If you upgrade your Gateway to version 5.7.x or higher and you have many dataviews in the Gateway without a valid schema, then it is recommended that you also upgrade Gateway Hub to version 2.4.x or higher to take advantage of the automatic inference of schema in the Gateway Hub. Gateway Hub 2.3.x and older will continue to report ingestion errors if a dataview is published without a schema.

New binary file name for Geneos third-party plugins

The binary file naming convention in ITRS Downloads has been changed from <plugin><version>.tar.gz to <plugin>-<version>.tar.gz. This change applies to all Geneos versions.

New ITRS Maven repository

The ITRS Maven repository has changed its location from <url>https://itrsgroup.bintray.com/collection</url> to <url>https://maven.itrsgroup.com/repository/public</url>. Please update all the existing links as they will stop working by end of February 2021.

New workspace directory in Active Console

Beginning Geneos 5.6.x, Active Console now sets the new workspace default directory to the following paths:

• On Windows: ~\ITRS\ActiveConsole

• On macOS and Linux: ~/ITRS/ActiveConsole/

The new default workspace directory is used when creating a new workspace, but all existing workspaces are not affected. For more information, see Workspace directory in Active Console.

New binary file name for Geneos components

As part of the improvements to automate our deployment process, the binary file naming convention in ITRS Downloads has been changed from geneos-<component>-<version>.<os>.tar.gz to geneos-<component>-<version>-<os>.tar.gz. This change applies beginning Geneos 5.5.x.

Self-monitoring in Geneos

Beginning Geneos 5.4.x, self-monitoring in Geneos is now enabled by default with no configuration required.

This results in an Entity being dynamically created called <gateway_name> Info which contains samplers and dataviews that are automatically enabled with no configuration required. These samplers and dataviews are created using the existing Gateway plugins which you may already have manually configured in your Gateways.

If you do not wish the Gateway to automatically create a self-monitoring Entity, you can disable this feature in the Gateway > Operating environment section.

For more information, see operatingEnvironment > selfMonitoring in Gateway Operating Environment documentation.

E4JMS plugin

Beginning Geneos 5.4.x, the E4JMS plugin supports SSL client authentication. This feature introduces breaking changes to the E4JMS plugin SSL implementation for older Geneos versions.

If you are using SSL connections on your E4JMS plugins, you must update your configuration when using the new schema.

For more information, see E4JMS Plugin Technical Reference.

File Keyword Monitor plugin

Beginning Geneos 5.4.x, the FKM plugin uses Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) by default. Be aware that this may introduce breaking changes in your implementation.

For more information, see the following documentation in the File Keyword Monitor:

• Regular expressions
• Notable differences between POSIX and PCRE

State Tracker plugin

The State Tracker > Rewind option in Gateway Setup Editor is now disabled by default.

For more information, see trackerGroup > trackers > tracker > rewind in State Tracker Technical Reference.

If you enable this option, this may cause a sudden increase in your CPU usage with no known changes in the monitored file. Since the State Tracker will track the monitored file from the beginning, and not when the file grows for new events.

Dynamic Entities

Gateway, Netprobe, and Licence Daemon have each been updated to support licensing of Collection Agent plugins. All three of these components must be updated to Geneos 5.2.x or higher for the Dynamic Entities feature to be supported in Gateway.

Collection Agent plugins require an additional licence to use. Please contact your ITRS Account Manager or ITRS Sales.

Gateway and Licence Daemon

If you are upgrading to Gateway 5.2.x or higher, you should also upgrade Licence Daemon to version 5.2.x or higher.

StatsD Plugin

The StatsD configuration in the packaged Collection Agent (collection-agent.yml) now uses the default protocol UDP and port 8125. Previously, this was set to protocol TCP and port 7780.