NetCrunch 9.2 Quick Overview

Nominally only minor release, NetCrunch 9.2 is a major step forward. This document just briefly summarizes the most important changes out of over 800 change requests processed.

Major Changes

NetCrunch Users and Access Management

User accounts and access profiles has been redesigned and now console and WebAccess use the same accounts for authentication. New User & Access Rights Manager window is much easier to use than in the previous version. Additionally, various settings are synchronized with user profile and between desktop console and web console. New "NetCrunch Audit" Monitoring Pack allows monitoring NetCrunch failed login attempts.

The only drawback is that the access rights profiles must be setup from scratch.

Administration Console Login

Administration Console requires NetCrunch Administration access to be assigned to the user profile. We recommend to create and use separate accounts for each NetCrunch administrator.

Solaris Monitoring and disk monitoring extension

NetCrunch 9.2 includes new SSH remote monitoring engine and Monitoring Pack for Solaris system. Additionally, monitoring of disks has been extended for all Unix family systems.

Integration Module

NetCrunch 9.2 offers integration for several external service desk and messaging services. It means that when NetCrunch opens an external ticket, it can also automatically close this ticket when the alert is closed. Two way integration also allows for alert to be automatically closed in NetCrunch after the ticket had been closed in the external system. Current version supports the most popular services, but more integration will be added in the future versions.

Integration Module includes two parts:

• Integration Profiles which allow to set communication channel with external services
• Integration Actions used to trigger messages and ticketing actions.

Current version supports: freshdesk, HipChat, IFTTT, pagerduty, slack, trello twitter and zendesk.

Event Details

New window offers better insight into event parameters and implements many useful features. It also allows changing various alert parameters, analyzing alert frequency and adding comments by various administrators.

Features and Improvements by Category

Monitoring

SNMPv3 improvements

NetCrunch supports using additional field (context) for SNMPv3 monitoring. It allows monitoring layer 2 segments on Cisco switches using SNMPv3.

SNMP string value monitoring

NetCrunch supports alerts based on string SNMP values:

• Equals to
• Not equals to
• Contains
• Not contains
• Matches regular expression
• Change (any to any)

Monitoring of Solaris systems

Program contains new SSH engine and 3 Monitoring Packs for Solaris monitoring.

Better disk space monitoring on all Unix family systems

New versions extends disk monitoring capabilities for each Unix family system. This is based on iostats tool features available on particular system.

• 14 new disk metrics for BSD system
• 4 new disk metrics for Mac OS X
• 28 new disk metrics for Linux
• 32 disk metrics available for Solaris

Interactive Sensor Testing

After configuring sensor you can test its configuration by using new Test button. Here is an example test of HTTP request sensor.

New Monitoring Packs

• HP ProCurve Switch
• Sophos Antivirus Server
• vCenter Server 6.0
• Cisco ASA VPN Tunnels Statistics
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager
• Java Application Server (SNMP)
• Veeam Backup and Replication Server
• Barracuda Firewall
• Generic Printer

Updated Monitoring Packs

• ESXi datastore monitoring
• Cisco SNMP

Monitoring of WebMessages (alerts can be send using REST API)

NetCrunch 9.2 adds another tab in the external events window. Messages can be send using REST API using HTTP protocol from any application. After receiving it you can create an alert for such external message. It works in very similar way to syslog messages and SNMP traps.

Alert Management

Redesigned Event Details window

New window offers better insight into event parameters and implements many useful features which give you more flexibility to fine tune the alert settings.

• allows changing various alert parameters, you can easily disable alert, change its parameters or alerting actions
• shows the Monitoring Packs where the event is defined and allows to adjust it if necessary
• allows analyzing alert frequency
• comments can be added to alerts and the last comment will be visible in the event log
• display performance chart calculated in the same way as the threshold is monitored

Integration Actions

Action window contains new section with Integration actions. These actions also require Integration Profile to be defined in order to setup communication with external service.

Console and Data Presentation

New Trend Viewer

NetCrunch trend viewer has been improved in order to better present various metrics collected by the program.

New features:

• More chart display types (trend, trend + range, stacked, area) - range charts automatically display min, max and average data.
• Custom series scaling and adjustable units
• Ability to compare counters across multiple nodes by choosing counter first, then selecting nodes for which it's been collected
• Various performance improvements

Improved Performance Views

Bar chart has been improved and uses the same color schemes like other chart types. Additionally, small triangle next to the value shows the latest change direction. Charts support SNMP tick unit conversion to standard time units (seconds, milliseconds). All charts perform animations for better change indication.

Another new feature is, when you hold the shift key while hovering over performance line charts, the hint window is synchronized and displayed on all charts as below.

Improved charts in reports

Reports charts also use range charts to show min and max values in the given time range.

Redesigned Monitoring Issue Window

New window allows easier reviewing and fixing all issue categories. You can select all nodes affected by the issue and fix it with one click. The window is now available in Web Console.

New Node Notes

New window delivers better note management. Each note can be easily commented by NetCrunch users and can have labels and due date. Notes can't be deleted but you can archive them with single click.

Smaller UI changes

Ability to disable task auto popup

Now you can switch off auto popup feature and only observe blue dot with number of tasks that require you attention.

New Filtering conditions

Now you can create view for nodes having IP address assigned or not assigned.

(WebAccess) Node Properties Tab

Node properties are accessible in WebAccess in read-only mode.

(WebAccess) Auto collapsing Atlas Tree

When no maps are available for the user (due to access rights settings) , the Atlas Tree is automatically collapsed.

SNMP MIB search improvement

You can use multiple words when searching MIB objects (i.e. cisco status)

Manage Monitoring Packs folders

New Windows

Atlas Configuration Wizard

New wizard helps you better manage automatic Monitoring Packs. You can disable rules and packs according to you monitoring preferences. Additionally, creating default notification scheme has been improved - you can to set actions on alert close and decide to get notifications only for critical alerts.

API Key Manager

Allows to manage API keys for applications that need to send data to NetCrunch using REST API. Currently it can be used for two-way PagerDuty integration.

New Credential Manager

Managing monitoring credentials has been moved to separate window and is much easier now.

New Remote Sessions window

It can be used to see all connected users and to terminate any connection.

Integration Profiles

It allows to define parameters required for each integration channel. This includes parameters required by external service provider such as keys, passwords etc.

GrafCrunch 2.6

New GrafCrunch version is based on stable version of Grafana 2.6. The most important feature for NetCrunch users is that you can now connect to multiple NetCrunch servers and create summary dashboards on a single screen.

New features

• Ability to connect to multiple NetCrunch Servers
• Putting series from multiple datasources into a single chart
• New and much improved time picker
• New powerful and flexible table panel
• More axis units for graph (Length, Volume, Temperature, Pressure, etc)
• Graph option to hide series with all zeroes from legend and tooltip
• Resize the panel by dragging the lower right corner

Breaking changes

• User access rights can't be upgraded
• Object access rights tab has been removed from Node, Map and Atlas properties windows. Manage access rights using User & Access Rights Manager window
• Global notes window is not available. Notes can be accessed from Node Properties window

Other Changes

• NCCLI - command line utility allows reseting admin password on NetCrunch Server
  • nccli reset-admin-password
• Stability and Performance Improvements - we constantly improve NetCrunch stability and scalability by performing multiple stress tests.