PerformanceGuard^® 7.4 Release Notes

Release date: 2018, 18th September

What's New in the Server?

Adaptive Baselining

The use of static thresholds suffers in situations where the performance of a business application is affected by a heavy load in normal peak hour. This could e.g. be longer response times on the domain controllers in the morning when a lot of employees boot and login to their computers.

With static thresholds, you will have to choose between false negatives during normal peak hours or not getting notified until things are really bad.

With Adaptive Baselining you will only be notified when performance is significantly worse than expected based on the historical data collected. The Adaptive Baselining takes into account the server, IP address, port, and protocol as well as from which subnet the computers access to application servers

Licensing

The licensing information is now available in the 'About' section in the top right menu.

The information clearly shows the number of purchased as well as used licenses for both normal PerformanceGuard agents and AutoSteps agents.

In this menu you can add a new license file which is needed to access the web console after upgrading to this version - please contact CapaSystems before upgrading to ensure you have a valid license file.

Prepared for ServiceNow integration

Customers using ServiceNow for Incident and Problem Management will soon be able to integrate ServiceNow with data from PerformanceGuard. This version supports the integration. The integration itself will be offered free of charge.

New Location administration

The location administration page has been improved to support drag and drop movement of agent groups and locations. Please check the built-in dashboard 'Getting Started' for an introduction video for this section.

New Application administration

The administration of applications has been simplified for much easier understanding and faster configuration. Please check the built-in dashboard 'Getting Started' for an introduction video for this section.

This version does not use the server and port groups like previous versions - an application is simply defined by servers and ports directly.

During an upgrade, applications will be automatically created or updated in the following way

1. Server groups that are not empty are mapped to an application with the same name as the server group
   • If a port group exists with the same name, the ports in this group are added to the application
   • If no port group exists with the same name, the application is left with no ports added
2. Existing Applications are defined by the servers and ports in the groups already mapped to the application
3. Server and port groups are left as is to avoid problems with existing reports

Graph widgets improvements

• It is now possible to specify the resolution of your data instead of only having the automatic resolution.
• A 'Statistics' pane has been added to provide a quick overview of statistics for the series on the graph. These will be shown below the graph when printing.
• Thresholds are now shown on the graphs. They can be toggled on and off.
  

Dashboards

All users now have the option to create dashboards. Please check the built-in dashboard 'Getting Started' for an introduction video for this section.

The dashboards are now shown in three sections:

• My Dashboard - show dashboards created by the logged in user - these dashboards are not available to other users unless made public.
• Public Dashboard - shows all dashboards made public by the creator. Public dashboards can only be edited by the creator or an administrator
• Built-In Dashboards - contains the factory dashboards. The dashboard cannot be edited but they can be copied and then edited.

New Dashboards

New dashboards with new widgets have been added. Please check the built-in dashboard 'Getting Started' for an introduction video for this section.

Detailed Computer analysis

Purpose:

• To give a more detailed insight into the data collected for the computers

New widgets:

• Application Impact for Computers
  • Shows all network applications accessed within the selected time period - no configuration needed
  • A green bubble indicates that there has been an activity with acceptable performance. 
  • If performance is not acceptable, a red bubble is shown. If the poor performance continues, the bubble color is shown with increasing intensity - click the bubble for more information
• Network Traffic List
  • Shows the collected network traffic for the selected computer
  • You can configure which columns to see in the two tabs
• Process List
  • Shows the process resource consumption for processes on the selected computer
  • You can configure which columns to see in the two tabs

Who's Affected

Purpose:

• Identify if a problem is related to the application servers or the network
• Identify when the problem started end possibly ended

New widgets:

• Affected Locations
  • In a sunburst, all locations with activity are shown
  • Color coding helps identify locations where many of the users accessing an application is affected by performance issues
  • If only a section of the location hierarchy is affected, probably you should look at the network
  • If all locations are equally affected, probably you should look at the application servers
• Application Impact for Locations
  
  • Show a timeline for locations and present color-coded information on the performance impact

Application Dashboard

Purpose:

• Provide a quick overview of the status for all network applications

New widgets:

• Affected Locations
  • Shows the number of online as well as affected computers for a single network application
  • The ratio of affected computers define the color of the widget
  • Click the widget to get info on who's online and/or affected

SSL Installation changed

This version is supported in both Microsoft Edge as well as Google Chrome.

Documentation 

The PerformanceGuard documentation is continuously updated and is available online here

Discontinuation

PerformanceGuard is no longer officially support in Internet Explorer. This does not mean that you cannot use IE but issues related to this browser alone will not be fixed

Download

PerformanceGuard can be downloaded from here

Known Issues

Visit the online known issues list to receive the latest info.