Thank you for joining askCA for CA Unified Infrastructure Management. I want to thank the CA Team for being available to take customer questions in a live Q&A setting and of course want to thank our customers for joining today, we hope you found today's session helpful.
Certain questions dealt with product roadmap, as such they may have been pulled from this transcript. If you have any questions about the direction of the product I encourage you to register for a product roadmap session (registration is required) Product Roadmaps & Feedback Sessions - CA Technologies
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from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: Hi Everyone! thank you for joining office hours for CA UIM !
from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: OK, let's get started... i have support team here and product management ready to answer your questions!
from Brooke to everyone: Good morning! I was wondering what the game plan/release plan for suppoting Server 2016 Hubs would be?
from Ashish Aggarwal (CA) to everyone: @Brooke : Windows Server 2016 for hub shall be available with upcoming UIM 9.0
from Kurt Mairamhof to everyone: @ashish: same question about sql2016 support. Migration Project are on the go
from Mike Arnone to everyone: In USM, under Inventory, there is a Delete with the Prevent Redicovery. This does not seem to prevent Robots from re-registering. We have a problem with servers that have “rouge” UIM Robots (perhaps from an image, etc…). These machines typically create Alarms that are not wanted & we don’t always have access to these machines. I can’t find a way to BLOCK robots from re-registering. Perhaps you can expand the Prevent Rediscovery & make a BANNED list?
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Mike, the USM 'delete' feature is really just to delete inventory from the database, you are correct that it doesn't have any effect on installed robots or their ability to register with the hub. I'd be happy to file an enhancement/idea if you haven't already - but in the meeantime, you may be able to use e.g. Windows Firewall at the hub level to block the individual IP addresses of the 'rogue' robots as a workaround. As long as those robots can't talk to the hub on port 48002 they can't re-register.
from Jason Allen to everyone: (or iptables on Linux)
from Animesh Panja to everyone: @Kurt - Yes, we will support sql2016 in 2014 mode in UIM 9.0
from David van Lith to everyone: Are there plans to make a report about current configurations. So like the telemetry probe but one step deeper, with configured thresholds and severeties and metrics.
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @David the new alarm policy UI will go someway to provide much deeper insight into configured metrics and thresholds. The alarm policy UI is scheduled to be included in UIM 9.0. We do have reporting on configurations in the backlog as well.
from Brooke to everyone: Can you talk about some of the new features/enhancements you guys are excited about in UIM 9.0?
from Mike Arnone to everyone: Are there any detailed docs on creating custom CABI/Jaspersoft reports for UIM? I know at CA World 2016 there were a few Demos. Are there any videos posted or real world examples of how to do this?
from Andre Esterhuysen to everyone: When the sql2016 support is rolled out, will we get some "out-of-the-box" fresh dashboards as well?
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @Brooke please attend the roadmap session on the 30th. Personally for me, it's the alarm policy UI which greatly simplifies alarm metric threshold configuration and provides, static, dynamic and time over threshold support as well as the ability to configure what actions are fired in one single UI.
from Ashish Aggarwal (CA) to everyone: @Andre : are asking for OOTB dashboards for SQL server probe?
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Mike we have a video up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJrDPKm2Zaw -- also as I understand it there have been some new 'custom topic' features added, I don't have a video for that just yet but I expect one soon
from Andre Esterhuysen to everyone: @Ashish - yes, I am refering to sqlserver probe.
from Mike Arnone to everyone: OK, I'll look at the video. Thanks
from Saju Mathew to everyone: When we upgrade our UIM environment to the latest version. Till what extend of backward compatiblity will be there?
from David van Lith to everyone: Are the Time over Threshold alarms available MCS in UIM 9?
Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: @Brooke, please follow this link to register for a roadmap session. https://www.ca.com/us/product-roadmaps.html
from Ashish Aggarwal (CA) to everyone: @Andre : SQLserver 2016 is already supported by SQLserver probe version 5.10 , refer https://docops.ca.com/ca-unified-infrastructure-management-probes/ga/en/alphabetical-probe-articles/sqlserver-sql-server-monitoring/sqlserver-sql-server-monitoring-release-notes
from Ashish Aggarwal (CA) to everyone: @Andre: no new OOTB dashboard for SQL server probe
from Brooke to everyone: @Ben @Melissa - thanks!
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @David, yes. It's actually going to be via the alarm policy. Which is a new UI workflow on top of MCS. It's completely agnostic of the monitoring probes and support ToT for both dynamic and statics thresholds against any monitoring probe. If you attend the roadmap session on the 30th we can go into a little more detail. https://www.ca.com/us/product-roadmaps.html
from Mike Arnone to everyone: What are the plans for CDM probe? Are the CDM & CDM MC version going to continue? Or are you going to go back to having only 1 CDM probe version?
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Saju I'm not sure exactly what you mean by backward compatibility, but in general, if you have older robots/hubs in the environment it will be fine to continue running on those older versions after upgrading to a new UIM server as long as they are running on supported operating systems. You can always look here for some details about compatibility: https://docops.ca.com/ca-unified-infrastructure-management/8-5-1/en/getting-started/compatibility-matrices/
from David van Lith to everyone: And Time to Threshold alarms?
from Andre Esterhuysen to everyone: @Ashish. Thanks. It is a pity. When new technology support e.g Azure is rolled out we get fresh and relevant dashboards but rarely see any evolution on the "older" technologies.
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @David, Time To Threshold is a maybe, I'm pushing for it but I don't have a firm commitment from engineering for 9.0. It's definately in the backlog.
from Ashish Aggarwal (CA) to everyone: @Andre : i take this as a feedback.
from Mike Arnone to everyone: In the web Admin Console, it used to be able to search all hubs to Find a Robot machine name without having to specify which HUB. The latest version can only search 1 hub at a time. Are you going to put back the Search All Hubs functionality in the Admin console?
from Kurt Mairamhof to everyone: Alarm Objects in HTML5 Dashboards launch Flash AlarmConsole, is there a HTML5 AlarmConsole in UIM 9.0?
from Andre Esterhuysen to everyone: Can you perhaps give me some pointers to reduce the age of retained data? We have a client that retained raw data for 160 days and now we need to reduce this drastically to limit DB growth. A support call is open as the data does not seem to age out as expected.
from Rajeev Kurupati to everyone: @Mike, New CDM probe will have cdm_core as dependency so if customer deploys it, cdm_core too will be deployed.
from Ashish Aggarwal (CA) to everyone: @Mike: We take this as a valuable feedback. Can you please raise an idea on community for us to see the interest and we shal ladd in the product backlog
from Mike Arnone to everyone: @Rajeev - Are you trying to say, yes there will only be 1 CDM probe version in the future?
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @Kurt. We're releasing a preview to the new HTML5 alarm viewer with 9.0. It is currently not a full replacement for USM's alarm viewer but we'll be delvivering incremental updates over the course of the next 12 months.
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Andre - I have found that the data_engine maintenance often does not complete because the default timeout is too low. Try setting data_management_timeout in data_engine.cfg to its maximum value, which is 65534 -- then, a best practice is to reduce retention a small amount at a time. For example if you're retaining 365 days currently, reduce that to 360 days, then allow maintenance to run overnight. If it is successful in reducing the age of the data, then the following night you could try 355, or 350, etc.
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Andre if issues persist with data maintenance it would be advisable to open a support ticket as this can get tricky sometimes.
from David van Lith to everyone: Is there a way to get notified when a new probe version comes out?
from Rajeev Kurupati to everyone: @Mike, we have one release of CDM coming up soon with 2 probes. after that, for subsequent release, we will have single CDM probe
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Andre, I just noticed you mentioned a case was already open, I will look into this.
from Brooke to everyone: Is there a way to download probes from CA's website, not the old nimsoft website? (our primary hub doesn't have internet access, so cannot reach out and update the archive automatically).
from Ashish Aggarwal (CA) to everyone: @David: We have starting announcing on communities about the probes with version released in the previous month. This announcement is ade on first friday of every Month.
from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: @david, assume you are already following the community but also a good idea to follow ashish so you can get notified when he publishes content
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Brooke, currently this is not available but we are working on it internally. Eventually all things from support.nimsoft.com will be migrated to support.ca.com but we want to make sure to proceed in a way which won't break legacy implementations.
from Mike Arnone to everyone: Are you planning to add PING testing, since ROBOT INACTIVE is unclear as to whether Robot is Down OR Server is Down? We have different SLAs & Different teams that support a Server Down, Vs a Robot problem.
from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: If you are new to askCA - welcome! and thank you for joining today. this is a webex chat event and we are happy to answer your questions best we can. you have 30 minutes left to submit questions..
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Mike, there are no current plans in the backlog for integrating ping/icmp tests into Robot Inactive alarms - you could raise an idea, but this could also potentially be something that you could accomplish using NAS Auto-operators and LUA scripts.
from Saju Mathew to everyone: Also, I too have same question as Mike... Sometime UIM alerts are not generated... when the Robot is down... Untill someone idetify that the Nimsoft is not runnnig.
from Kurt Mairamhof to everyone: In CABI Dashboards we have all Alarms visible but cannot interact with them. Is this going to change or is it a limitation to live with?
from Lawrence Atlas (CA Technologies) to everyone: @Mike for cabi custom ad-hoc reports, you have to make sure each report has 1 measured item in the report or you will not get a save button to save the report.
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @kurt in UIM 9.0 the drill to alarm goes to the new HTML5 alarm viewer not the CABI dashboard, which as you note is static in nature.
from Kurt Mairamhof to everyone: @Ben - Thanks, sounds good
from Kurt Mairamhof to everyone: @Ben; Can we see that in the UIM Cloud first and if yes by when?
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @Kurt, it's available now.
from Mike Arnone to everyone: @Jason - We already do LUA scripts in NAS Pre-Processing & that is not a very good solution, especially since NAS is single-threaded. - Even CA internal GIS Dept has issues with this: https://communities.ca.com/docs/DOC-231178452-ca-on-ca-tech-tip-using-the-uim-api-to-close-robot-inactive-alarms-for-down-systems
from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: great questions so far, are there any more?
from David van Lith to everyone: Any plans to make it possible to set the order of preprocessing rules by GUI?
from Mike Arnone to everyone: @Jason - We also use CA SOI to create tickets/emails for UIM Alarms & to create Services with UIM CIs. That's why we need to go to so much trouble with the whole issue of LUA PreProcessor scripts for Robot Inactive/Server Down alarms. I don't think UIM Team fully understands how important this issue is to an IT Dept.
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @David can I assume you mean alarm pre-preprocessing rules? If so, the answer is no for IM/NAS. However, with the alarm policy work we do plan to support pre-processing and enrichment capabilites in the future.
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Mike, appreciate your insights. This is something we're always discussing internally. It might be a good idea to bring this up on the next roadmap session as well.
from Mike Arnone to everyone: Have you fixed the issue with UIM creating duplicates in the DB if a machine has a Robot installed to 1 hub & then the machine is added to a Remote Probe on a Robot installed to a different Hub (such as Net_Connect)? It used to create duplicates in the DB.
from David van Lith to everyone: Could I use the new standalone CABI installation to connect to multiple UIM instances?
from David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to everyone: @Mike, a lot of this is somewhat by design so that we can err on the side of caution when we don't have enough information to match devices on. I recently wrote a blog post on this topic: https://communities.ca.com/people/DavidLeDeaux/blog/2018/01/23/discovery-correlation
from David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to everyone: @Mike, UIM 8.51 includes a new version of discovery_server that is much more configurable than previous versions and you should find it possible to create a ruleset that matches your needs with the new version.
from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: we have a few minutes left for final questions...
from Mike Arnone to everyone: @David - Thanks, I'll read the link. But it doesn't sound like a clear yes ior no answer... :-o
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @David, currently no. We only have one UIM data source adapter which is used by all the reports and dashboards. This is a great enhancement request though.
from Mike Arnone to everyone: Are you planning to have 1 Delete which can Delete from both HUBs (Admin/IM) & from the UMP/USM ?
from Kurt Mairamhof to everyone: @Ben: Just checked our UIM Cloud Evaluation and I cannot find the HTML Part of the Alarm Console. The last update (News) was documented on Nov 3rd 2017
from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: just a reminder as i mentioned earlier, CA is now hosting 'roadmap' sessions for some products. Head on over to this link to register as we are having for UIM (registration is required): https://www.ca.com/us/product-roadmaps.html
from Ben Nelson to everyone: @Kurt. Feel free to email ben.nelson@ca.com and we can setup a webex and I'll walk you through this.
Thank you for attending todays askCA for UIM. we hope you found it useful. We will have these monthly for UIM so check back in the community for future events.
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Mike, I'm not aware of any such plans - but sounds like a good idea for an enhancement.
from David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to everyone: @Mike there's not really an easy answer on the correlation issue since there are a lot of variable at play. There's a high degree of possibility that yes, it will still create duplicates, however now it can be configured for your specific environment in the new version of discovery_server.
from David LeDeaux (CA Technologies) to everyone: @Mike if you have additional questions, please email me at david.ledeaux@ca.com
from Mike Arnone to everyone: @David - OK, thanks
from Jason Allen to everyone: @Mike, I'll say this much - we at CA are aware of the difficulty of using multiple consoles/clients to manage everything and this is something we're working toward, a single unified point of configuration for everything.
from Mike Arnone to everyone: Thanks Jason
from Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: Chat Transcripts will publish to the community later today - . Make sure you are following the community https://communities.ca.com/community/ca-infrastructure-management/unified-infrastructure-management
Melissa Potvin (CA) to everyone: Thanks for joining today!