ControlUp On-Premises Release Notes

Released March 09, 2022

A full description of our new features and enhancements for this version is available here.

For this ControlUp On-Premises (COP) release, we have improved the installation of components, including Insights. We have also added the following features:

• .NET Framework 3.5 is no longer required for the COP Server.
• Activity Files zipping management screen – now available on the setting page.
• To avoid too frequent reminders about license expiration, a new behavior has been implemented.
• The COP installer is now checking COP DB configuration to ensure required DB tables can be created.
• The COP installer is now checking for already existing MSSQL/MSSQL Express instances running on the COP server before installation (for light mode).
• In case the installation fails, the COP installer now supports rollbacks.

Known Issues and Limitations:

• COP Installer rollback – if the installer has passed the stage of configuring the IIS server, rollback will fail.
• In the Solve On-premises interface, Edge DX, Scoutbees, and Centralized Auditing are not supported or available.

• SOP – While the OVA installer is running, it does not require that you provide the hostname and domain name. If hostnames or domain names are not provided, OVAs will be redeployed.
• SOP – It is not possible to restore a backup configuration from version 8.5 SOP.
• SOP – Restoring SOP from one instance of 8.6 to another is supported, however, the backup file cannot contain spaces.

Insights On-premises (IOP)

IOP Enhancements

Note: To take advantage of the improvements in Insights, the Insights On-Premises Forwarder must also be upgraded to version 8.6.

• Management UI: New version of management UI now allows running management tasks on IOP such as password change, services management, license management and more. For more details, refer to https://support.controlup.com/docs/insights-administration

• For IOP appliances, root login is no longer possible.
• Notifications about activity file uploads are sent via email.

IOP New Known Issues and Limitations

• Automated reports may only produce 10 results. Workaround:

• SSH into the IOP master node or server if it is standalone.
• Change directory to  /opt/iop_volumes/config/iop_search/apps/iop/appserver/static​
• ​vi automated_reports.js
• Enter editing mode by typing i.
• Jump to line 100:

pageSize: “100”,

Add this snippet as follows:

• • Type :wq to save and exit the editing mode.
  • Log into IOP, go to Settings > Maintenance Tasks and click Reload Web Server Cache.

Your users should now be able to see 100 results.

• Management UI: the following behavior is expected:
  • If there are no public keys imported in the Service and Resources pane for Linux or OVA:
    • In the services table, there is no indication of a container’s status. A button appears for importing a public key for OVA.
    • In the servers table, the OS and version are those of the backend server, and Linux distribution is not listed.
  • Linux-based installations do not support the disk details pane.
• Customized reports: Non-admin users can customize and delete admin reports.
• VMware snapshots are not supported in IOP.

Solve On-Premises:

New Features and Enhancements:

• Custom dashboard v1
• Topology drill-down enhancements
• Azure integration
• Grid enhancements
• Grid presets
• Preset updates

Known Issues and Limitations:

• Historical troubleshooting and reporting is not available on SOP.
• SAML-based authentication is not supported.
• When deploying SOP, the domain name must match the FQDN of the COP server.
• The change of the SOP server name does not automatically change the DNS records. You must modify the DNS records manually.
• After importing configuration for the SOP server restore, the DB config server must be manually restarted.

Fixed Issues: 

This version of ControlUp On-Premises fixes the following issues.

• 95660 – COP: On failed installations, the installer may fail to roll back, leaving the system unrecoverable. It only affects Windows 2019 systems running COP. Before performing an upgrade, it is recommended that you take a snapshot of the system and revert to it if the upgrade fails.
• 79209 – COP installed in ‘C:\Program Files\Smart-X’ folder instead of C:\Program Files\‘ControlUp’
• 89580 – In previous versions, after upgrading the Real-Time Consoles, the monitor cache had to be cleared manually.
• 90749 – COP: Issue with authenticating COP users from different domains.
• 92305 – If the DB owner belongs to multiple groups or to a group with a long name, COP installation might fail.
• 79059 – High data spikes in the IOP session activity report.
• 83244 – COP license update fails due to license with a future date.
• 92454 – Real-Time Console showing ‘Disconnected’ from LDS when dedicated SQL and  COP users are used together (after upgrade).
• 94205 – The ControlUp Monitor fails to join a cluster due to case sensitive parsing of monitor system names.
• 95560 – COP: On Windows 2019 systems – The Installer fails during upgrade on LDS custom action one cannot reinstall – Windows 2019 Server
• 96296 – Some changes to the COP installer may not work without elevation.
• 79977 – COP: ControlUp Monitor creates an event when failing to clean files after zipping.
• 78596 – IOP: Reports in Firefox hang on “search is waiting for input” and need to be refreshed.
• 89508 – IOP: Netscaler’s certificate expiration timestamp under the “Gateway” report is in epoch format and not human-readable.
• 99633 – IOP: Help link opens a 404 page.
• 88860 – IOP: Session Activity sorting by logoff time is incorrect.

A full description of our new features and enhancements for this version is available here.

For this ControlUp On-premises (COP) release, we have made some improvements to the installation of the components, including Insights, as well as this new feature:

• Solve: You can now install a Solve On-premises (SOP) server and gain value from our web app in your own environment. Read here about Solve. For the documentation, see Welcome to Solve.

Note: Some issues listed below refer to those customers who installed the beta version of SOP.

Known Issues and Limitations:

• In the Solve On-premises interface, Edge DX, Scoutbees, and Centralized Auditing are not supported or available.
• After upgrading consoles, clear the monitor cache manually to fix issue 79720 – ControlUp Insight session displays duplicated session ID. To manually clear the monitor cache:

1. Delete files under C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\ControlUp\CacheActivity
2. Delete files under C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\ControlUp\CacheSchema 
3. Restart the monitor.

• 94751 – After upgrading from version 8.2x to version 8.5, the SOP & Insights On-premises (IOP) settings are deleted from the COP Server Installer.
  • Workaround – configure SOP/IOP manually via “modify” on add/remove programs post installation.
• 94021 – IOP server may run out of disk space in standalone deployments (OVA or Linux). Fix to come in a future maintenance release of 8.5. If you encounter this issue prior to the release, we recommend contacting ControlUp Support or Professional Services to perform the fix.
• 95660 – COP installer might fail to rollback on failed installation, leaving the system in a non-recoverable state. This issue occurs only when COP is installed on a Windows 2019 system. We recommend that you take a snapshot of the system prior to performing an upgrade, and revert to it in case of failed installations.
• SOP – OVA installer does not enforce providing hostname and domain name while running. Failure to provide hostname or domain name will result in OVA redeployment.

Fixed Issues:

The following issues were fixed for this release of ControlUp On-premises.

• 81890 – Support Console GoTo Insights for IOP 8.x – Go to Insights from Hosts grid views will not check the selected Host.
• 84449 – On-Prem Installer – Win Server 2019 – The ControlUp Central Configuration is disconnected when the COP Server Installation is run with Service User & SQL User.
• 84565 – License Update – The trial expiration bar is displayed even after a paid license is updated.
• 89048 – COP VMware Server Upgrade – COP VMware Server Upgrade from any VMware version to v8.2.1.6000 in Trial Mode causes the trial license bar to display with an expiration of {0} days.
• 89059 – Solve – COP VMware Server Upgrade – COP VMware Server Upgrade from v8.2.0.12000 to v8.2.1.6000 in Trial Mode causes the trial license bar to display Solve as {21} days.
• 89470 – COP VMware Server Trial Mode – Selecting the Close option of the trial license bar expiration causes the Real-Time Console to crash.

Insights On-premises (IOP)

IOP Improvements

Note: To benefit from the improvements to Insights, the Insights On-premises Forwarder must also be upgraded to version 8.5.

• Customized reports – Customized reports can now be linked directly to the IOP UI.
• Management UI – Introduced a new management UI that allows executing all management tasks from the UI
• Branch mapping views – Now added to IOP menus.
• Better disk management to provide higher availability.
• Activity files alerting – Issues with the activity files upload stream are now reported by mail.

IOP New Known Issues and Limitations

• Automated reports may produce only 10 results. Workaround:

1. Connect via SSH to the IOP master node or server if standalone.
2. Change directory to  /opt/iop_volumes/config/iop_search/apps/iop/appserver/static vi automated_reports.js​
3. Enter editing mode by typing i.
4. Go to line 100:pageSize: “100”,And add this snippet as follows:
   
5. Save and quit editing mode by typing ​:wq.
6. Log into IOP, go to Settings > Maintenance Tasks and click Reload Web Server Cache.
   Now your users should be able to see 100 results.

• Management UI: the following behaviour is expected:
  • For Linux and OVA when no public key is imported in the Service and Resources pane:
    • On the services table there is no indication for the status of a container. For OVA a button to import a public key appears.
    • On the servers table, the OS and version indicated are from the backend server and there is no indication for the Linux distribution.
  • Disks details pane is not supported on Linux-based installations.
• Customized reports: A non-admin user can change and delete admin user reports.
• VMware snapshots are not supported in IOP.

IOP Fixed Issues

These reported issues were fixed for this version.

• 85491 – Session Resources logoff time shows wrong data.
• 85933 –  Session Activity last 60 days old sessions as ‘still active’.
• 70639 – Missing data on app usage details when using computer picker to select multiple computers.
• 80844 – IOP forwarder – When modifying “activity file path”, the field displays the path that it was installed with and not the new one.
• 87786 – Users selector does not display all users in the Protocol Trends report.
• 83589 – IOP runs out of space in Linux-based installations.
• 79720 – ControlUp insight session shows duplicated session ID.
• 83202 – IOP Index overflows and doesn’t truncate old data.
• 84460 – Data flows to IOP intermediately.
• 86027 –  Automated reports provide different result than interactive reports.

Solve On-premises:

New features and enhancements:

• Real-Time dashboards
• Dynamic Topology view
• Real-time grids
• Grid filtering
• Administration UI for SOP appliance

Known Issues and Limitations:

• Historical troubleshooting and reporting is not available on SOP.
• SAML based authentication is not supported.
• While deploying SOP, domain name must match the COP server domain FQDN.
• Changing SOP server name does not trigger automatic DNS record change and a manual change is required.
• After importing configuration for SOP server restore, a manual restart of DB config server is required.

New Features and Capabilities

ControlUp Agents authentication methods enhancements 

• Added support for enabling the enforcement of certificate-based authentication using Agent MSI deployment.
• Enhanced the default authentication method.

ControlUp Agents communication channel security improvements 

• Added the option to encrypt communication between the ControlUp Agents and ControlUp Consoles and Monitors.
• Additional security enhancements.

High resolution support improvements for the Real-Time Console

Top ribbon fills the whole Console width on high resolution displays.

Citrix Cloud – cloud connector status improvement

• Cloud Connector Status – When the status is “Connected”, the column bar’s visual indicator is now green.
• Cloud Connector Version Status – When the status is “Updated”, the column bar’s visual indicator is now green.

Bug Fixes

• 71050 – “Get back to Sign-in” link was removed from the email verification window.
• 90355 – Fixed the synchronization issues between the Real-Time Console offline cache and the ControlUp Organization configuration.
• 90283 – Fixed Citrix Sessions running on Windows 10 or Windows Server 2019 so the actual value for the Latency Last metric now displays properly (may have previously shown as NA).

Known issues

No new known issues for version 8.2.5. For a list of existing known issues, read version 8.2 known issues.

A full description of our new features and enhancements for this version is available here.

We have made some improvements in the installation of our On-premises version and Insights On-premises (IOP) and here are the details:

ControlUp On-premises

Installer

• Now supports SQL Server 2019.
• As part of the installation process, the installer now imports all available:
  • Scripts to use in Script-based Actions
  • Virtual Expert and Automated Action rules
• Added default user group to “Authorized Group” screen.
• Added UI option to select backup folder file path.
• Created the application pool with the Load user profile option set to True.
• The installation is not confined to a specific SQL collation when connecting to the database.
• If upgrading from version 8.1.5.20 and above, the installation is performed only from the installer.

Insights On-premises (IOP)

Note: To benefit from the improvements to Insights, the Insights On-premises Forwarder must also be upgraded to version 8.2.

Insights

• Added server selector to the Citrix License Usage report.
• Session Activity – Changed Last Seen timestamp value to “Still Active”.

OVA

• Support a closed list of special characters to use in the OVA password.

Forwarder

• Support Upgrade and Modify (from appwiz).
• You can now safely restore small amounts of data – up to ~5 days (“sinkhole” folder).

Other

• You can now produce and export to PDF a license usage report with a table for data on “License Usage Last 7 Days”.
• Disable support of old TLS versions (1.0 & 1.1).

NEW! OVA Upgrade tool to upgrade VMs for the IOP (not ready for Beta).

Known Issues and Limitations

• During a monitor upload chain restart, a small data gap might be created for some reports. By default, the reset chain occurs every 24 hours from the time the monitor was installed.
  A new key was added to set the time of the first chain restart.
  • Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Smart-X\ControlUp\Console\ActivityFile\
  • Value: InitialResetChainTime
• Folders are only written to disk every chain start. If IOP started between the chain restarts, then it may be up to 24hrs before you see the folders. Using IOP without the folders being generated first, can cause unexpected behavior in the UI.
• IOP Admin password can’t be changed from the UI, only from IOPCMD – #81122
• If the customer’s network IP range is within 172.18.255.0 address range, the IOP servers will not be accessible at all. This is since IOP uses that IP range by default for its containers.
  Workaround – Run these commands:
  1. Edit docker configuration file: vi /etc/docker/daemon.json
  2. Add the following text to the file:

     {"default-address-pools":[{"base":"192.168.254.0/24","size":24},{"base":"192.168.253.0/24","size":24”}]}

  3. Save the file by hitting: Esc, then  x! then  Enter
  4. Restart docker: systemctl restart docker.service
  5. If your IOP is in cluster mode, repeat i-iv steps for all nodes.
  6. Test communication by browsing to the IOP page.
• IOP installation on CentOS 8 may fail and require manual workaround
• 78447 – SMTP settings cannot be removed by UI.
  1. Workaround: Change through management UI
• Automated reports may not work properly (Computer trends, Protocol trends, Logon duration)
• 80293 – Top Insights might not be available in the first day after upgrading
• 79845 – Top Insights might run on a different schedule than the setting (3-4 hours delay).
  1. Workaround: Set the schedule manually to an earlier time.
• 80844 – IOP forwarder – when modifying “activity file path”, the field displays the path that was installed with and not the new one
• 79931 – When upgrading from 8.1.x to 8.2.x the checkboxes under “Settings -> Configuration” will not be saved
• 82254 – If working with win server 2019 there may be unexplained repeating errors in UM log
  1. Workaround: Install a Windows KB
     The specific update is KB4580422 – (November 10, 2020-KB4580422 Cumulative Update Preview for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.7.2 for Windows 10 , version 1809 and Windows Server, version 2019)
     https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4580422/kb4580422-cumulative-update-for-net-framework

Fixed issues

• 91103 – IOP: unable to export to PDF files bigger than 1MB.