Version 3.6

Monolith is pleased to announce the GA release of Version 3.6 of our flagship software offering. V 3.6 delivers expansive performance and user experience enhancements for the Monolith Software product. All of the modules from Monolith Software continue to be consolidated into a single user interface, accessed via a refined, intuitive administrative editor.

The goal for this release is simple: to make technology monitoring and management easier to deploy and maintain, resulting in accelerated productivity.

Highlights of the Version 3.6 release are listed below. If you're an existing customer, then please log in to the Monolith support site for a complete list of the 3.6 updates.

Core Enhancements

Pre-Upgrade Audit Script

  • Checks existing implementation to identify changes required to perform when upgrading

Performance Increase: MySQL 5.1 to 5.5

  • MySQL performance gains of 200-360%

SNMP Device Discovery Support

  • Button for "go discover this device now" makes it easy to add a single device
  • Allows association of polled metrics to virtual devices - so groups of devices can be created that map to an infrastructure service or process
  • New command-line to discover multiple or all device zones
  • Streamlined device management enables quicker deployment, testing, and validation

Instance (Interface) Multi-Tenancy

  • Instance from a real device can be associated with a virtual device
  • Provides extended end-to-end granularity
  • Enables monitoring of Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) from the Border/Edge

Authentication/Security Enhancements

  • Previously only supported LDAP or Active Directory
  • Now support standard LDAP, Active Directory, & LDAPs
  • Password reset functionality added
  • Brute force login mitigation logic

Rules Updates

Unified Metric and Topology Sub-Functions

  • Standardizes processes with more powerful, easier-to-write rules
  • Standardized functions for use within rules that can be shared across modules within Monolith

Updated rules for new version included in Upgrade Packages

  • Examples included for new rules functionality
  • New rules templates for API level components included

Updated Mib2IncRules functionality

  • MIB2include tool updated to improve accuracy of rules templates
  • Improved Mib2IncRules tool for event auto rules generation

Enhanced User Interface and Editor

  • Allows administrator to run database commands via web interface
  • Perl -c syntax checks via icon click
  • New Rules Editing interface
  • New Clone functionality allows duplication of services/jobs locally or to a remote broker
  • Downloadable Rules Support

Metric Manager Upgrades

Post Collection Consolidation Engine (PCCE)

  • Runs formulas on top layer to allow creation of meta metrics
  • 95th percentile support would be configured via the PCCE

New out-of-the-box transaction poller policies for Web transactions included

  • Added out-of-the-box policies for web transactions (DNS, DHCP, POP3/IMAP, SMTP, WebURL/Transaction, MySQL/Postgres/MSSQL)

JMX/SOAP Poller (Service)

  • Used for polling Java Virtual Machine metrics

SLM Engine Time Restrictions Supported

  • Supports exclusionary periods (e.g. maintenance windows) and business hours use for SLM calculations

Missing Data Threshold Engine

  • Added Missing Data Threshold Engine to create northbound violation alerts if polled data is missing or gets dropped

Default Threshold Engine now supports EnableCapture functionality

  • Logs to the 'captures log directory' every time a notification for a threshold definition is sent (downs, ups, and resend violations)

New Availability Details interface

  • Shows Metric Status Availability with a pie graph, bar graph, and outage periods
  • Includes Tab to switch between Performance and Availability Details

New tool to assist in developing WWW::Mechanize synthetic transaction scripts

  • Assists administrators in creating custom synthetic transaction script templates

Topology Dashboard Upgrades

  • Plug-in navigation supports all non-devices (i.e. IP networks, MPLS cloud)
  • Event List display type modes supported for Dashboard widget event drill down (DisplayID)
  • WebURL Widget supports dashboard scrolling within Dashboards
  • Allows user to save custom settings to automatically display desired topology views
  • Topology dashboard plugin supports zoom feature
  • Topology dashboard plugin allows saving a dynamically-generated topology layout as an editable dashboard
  • Support for metric instance multi-tenancy

Topology Manager Upgrades

  • Removed configuration SVN repo from MonolithRules entry
  • Updated Topology Configuration Agent support for Windows
  • Updated Topology Configuration Agent support for SSH2 library
  • Updated GatherNetworkInventory to automatically restrict routes to a certain size
  • All generic stitchers and discovery agents have been updated to support use of new sub-functions with new rules
  • Added support for auto-discovery & mapping of layer 2 connectivity via the BRIDGE-MIB

Event Manager Upgrades

  • Events, Actions, and Reporter consolidated into one user interface.
  • Event List Changes
    • SelectAll support
    • Dynamic sort hold after refresh
    • Supports OwnerId in the first column of the display
  • Watcher uses Meta Events configurations
  • GenericBaseTools Alarm Info supports handling of events that have been deleted
  • Knowledgebase security update to require Monolith login prior to viewing KB
  • New Rules Editing interface for CAPE
  • Changes in Mib2IncRules to better handle valid but uncommon MIB formats

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