HQ 4.0 Enterprise Release Notes

Hyperic HQ 4.0.3 Enterprise Now Available

Build #953

For 4.0 documentation, please see HQ Documentation.

New Features in 4.0

This section lists the new features in HQ Enterprise 4.0, which include the enterprise-only features listed in HQ Enteprise 4.0 Features and those listed in HQ Open Source 4.0 Features.

HQ Open Source 4.0 Features

Package Name Changes

• HQ packages for the x86-64 instruction set architecture are now labeled "x86_64" instead of "amd64" to more correctly reflect the supported architecture.
• Packages previously labeled "apple-darwin" are now labeled "apple-osx".

JSW Agent Launcher

The HQ Agent launcher is now based on the Java Service Wrapper (JSW), providing improved and automated agent lifecycle management. For more information, see Understanding the Agent Launcher and Agent Lifecycle Management.

Changed Agent Directory Structure

The directory structure of the agent installation is changed to support remote agent upgrades.  For more information, see HQ 4.0 Agent Installation Directory Structure.

Auto-Discovery Improvement

Changes in a platform's fully qualified domain name FQDN are auto-discovered.

"Last 8 Hours" Control on Current Health Page*

A new control on the Indicators tab of the Current Health page makes it easy to reset the metric display range to the last 8 hours.

JMX MBean Query

The new JMX MBean Query feature allows you to search for MBeans, display their attributes, and invoke selected MBean operations on them. The JMX Console is available on the Views tab when you have a JVM server selected in the HQ Portal. For more information, see Using the JMX MBean Query.

Metric Display Auto-Reset from Alert Email links

The HQ Portal's metric display range for metrics and charts can be automatically reset to eight hours by clicking on a chart link in alert email notifications. For more information, see Monitoring Overview.

Integration with Tapestry web application framework

We've implemented the Tapestry framework. This environment offers advantages over struts: it enables component reuse, simplifies localization, and allows us to build new features more rapidly. We expect this investment will deliver benefits to HQ community members and customers in the form of an HQ user interface that can we can rapidly grow and in response to customer requirements.

Java 5 Upgrade

The Tapestry integration described required Java 5 features. The agent and server build was split from the user interface (Tapestry) build. The agent and server code are compiled at class version 48 (Java 1.4). User interface Tapestry code is compiled at class version 49 (Java 5). The x86 Linux, HPUX, SPARC Solaris, x86 Windows, and AIX agent bundles were upgraded from a 1.4 to 1.5 JRE. 

Search Improvements

• Search button on every portal page — The search button appears in the upper right-hand of every HQ Portal page.
• Improved search in Resource Hub — You can specify multiple criteria, including resource name, type, current availability, and "owned by current user".  You can apply "and" or "or" logic to the search criteria you specify.

New Escalation Pause Options

Escalation schemes have new pause options. It is now possible to configure the following pause durations: 5, 10, 20, 30, 45, or 60 minutes; 24, 48, or 72 hours; or until the alert is fixed.

Improved Persistence Model

We've changed the data model and storage strategy for measurement data. Improved performance is the visible result of this change right now. In addition, this change lays the foundation for more powerful and flexible query and reporting in upcoming releases. Key changes include a simplified measurement schema and an optimized storage stragegy for availability data.

Web Services API

A new web services-based API for the HQ server is available for download on the HQ Portal's Administration page. The download includes JavaDoc for the API.

HQ Enteprise 4.0 Features

Unidirectional Agent-Server communications

A new agent-server communications strategy allows HQ to support specific security policies and controls that are commonly preferred in large deployments. For more information, see Configuring Unidirectional Communications.

Groups Alerts Summary Dashboard Portlet

Displays traffic light indicators for resource alerts and group alerts for groups.

Saved Charts Dashboard Portlet

A new Saved Charts portlet displays saved charts as a slideshow.

Agent Control Commands Available in Portal

The implementation of the JSW launcher enables remote control of HQ 4.0 Agents from the Portal. For more information, see Query and Update the Agent from the HQ Portal.

Metric Data Extrapolation

The HQ Portal provides a new View you can use to predict future values of a metric for the members of group, based on historical metrics. The Metric Data Extrapolation plugin is available on the Views tab when a group is selected. For more information, see Extrapolating Metrics for a Group.

Downtime Scheduling

You can now   specify a period of time during which metric collection for the resources in a group is paused. During the maintenance window, alerts that are active for the resources will not fire. The Schedule Downtime page is available on the Tools menu when a group is selected. For more information, see Schedule Maintenance for a Group.

Script Actions for Alerts

A script action allows you to access and use HQ environment variables that contain information about a fired alert. You can use the data in any fashion you wish, for instance in a web service call to external management system. For more information, see Define a Script Action for an Alert.

Platform Cloning

You can copy the inventory resources on one platform to one or more other platforms that exist in HQ inventory. The Clone Platform page is available in the HQ Portal on the Tools menu when a platform is selected.  For more information, see Cloning a Platform.

No Escalation Schemes for Recovery Alerts

In HQ 4.0, it is not possible to assign an escalation scheme to a recovery alert.

Multi-Condition Alerts are Limited to Three Conditions

To reduce complexity, the multi-condition alert feature in HQ Enterprise is changed, to limit the number of conditions to a maximum of three. After three conditions have been added to an alert, the Add Condition link will not appear. Existing alerts with more than three conditions continue to function, but you cannot add additional conditions to such alerts.

Response Time Feature Removed

The Response Time feature available for certain server types has been removed, because in some environments use of the feature over a long period of time caused HQ to become unstable.

Issues Fixed in 4.0 Enterprise

This section lists the issues fixed in each 4.x release.

Issues Fixed in 4.0.3 Enterprise

Hyperic JIRA (7 issues)
T	Key	Summary	Assignee	Reporter	Pr	Status	Res	Created	Updated	Due
	HQ-1549	Failed to update event references after network down recovery	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Dec 14, 2008	Feb 23, 2009
	HQ-1539	Oracle detected deadlock in JMS session pool worker	Charles Lee	Mike Mennis		Closed	FIXED	Dec 16, 2008	Mar 06, 2009	Dec 19, 2008
	HQ-1550	Bug in availability times reported from Report Center	Scott Feldstein	Scott Feldstein		Closed	FIXED	Dec 30, 2008	Feb 18, 2009
	HQ-1548	EE License with limitation on plugins doesn't work	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Resolved	FIXED	Dec 24, 2008	Dec 29, 2008
	HQ-1434	Time range label needs to be added for GAS portlet	Hyperic Support	Chip Witt		Closed	FIXED	Sep 09, 2008	Jan 08, 2009
	HQ-1238	HA: Currently Down page looses data after master node in HA restarts	Ryan Morgan	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Mar 24, 2008	Mar 06, 2009
	HQ-1140	Investigate MySQL deficiencies	Scott Feldstein	Jon Travis		Closed	FIXED	Jan 14, 2008	Mar 06, 2009

Issues Fixed in 4.0.2 Enterprise

Hyperic JIRA (8 issues)
T	Key	Summary	Assignee	Reporter	Pr	Status	Res	Created	Updated	Due
	HQ-1533	HQ tools plugin: Metric list is failing with invalid HQL	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Dec 09, 2008	Feb 17, 2009
	HQ-1530	No alerts are displayed in Recent Alert Portlets	Charles Lee	Nipuna Bhayani		Closed	FIXED	Nov 26, 2008	Nov 26, 2008
	HQ-1524	Foreign key FKE5B6292DC81F5938 in MySQL setup incorrect, causes error on user deletion	Scott Feldstein	Marty Messer		Closed	FIXED	Nov 21, 2008	Apr 15, 2009
	HQ-1518	Updates to plugin not honoring indicator, defaultOn, and interval fields	Patrick Nguyen	Marty Messer		Closed	FIXED	Oct 17, 2008	Mar 02, 2009
	HQ-1497	User with view only role can delete users from other roles	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Oct 03, 2008	Nov 23, 2008
	HQ-1480	GAS Portlet Exits configuration mode during refresh.	Anton Stroganov	Richard Pack		Closed	FIXED	Sep 29, 2008	Nov 23, 2008
	HQ-1527	GAS Portlet: Enable/Disable alert group buttons don't reset properly when canceling configuration.	Charles Lee	Anton Stroganov		Closed	FIXED	Nov 24, 2008	Dec 12, 2008
	HQ-1481	GAS Portlet - no available/current count is shown for the config palette.	Anton Stroganov	Richard Pack		Closed	FIXED	Sep 29, 2008	Nov 23, 2008

Issues Fixed in 4.0 Enterprise GA

Hyperic JIRA (45 issues)
T	Key	Summary	Assignee	Reporter	Pr	Status	Res	Created	Updated	Due
	HQ-1477	Single metric multi resource auto group chart in saved chart portlet shows no data	Patrick Nguyen	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Sep 26, 2008	Oct 01, 2008
	HQ-1471	Platform Cloning: Manually created service configurations aren't copied to target platform from the master platform	Charles Lee	Ilaya Perumal		Closed	FIXED	Sep 24, 2008	Sep 25, 2008
	HQ-1463	Platform Cloning: target platform doesn't get any servers after cloning completes	Patrick Nguyen	Ilaya Perumal		Closed	FIXED	Sep 23, 2008	Sep 24, 2008
	HQ-1450	HQApi fails to correctly approve platform in AIQ	Charles Lee	Mike Mennis		Closed	FIXED	Sep 16, 2008	Sep 19, 2008
	HQ-1400	No-wrapper script fails with IndexOutOfBoundsException	Gerardo Viedma	Mike Mennis		Closed	FIXED	Sep 02, 2008	Sep 03, 2008
	HQ-1368	Cannot update Resource Type Alert	Charles Lee	Charles Lee		Closed	FIXED	Aug 07, 2008	Aug 28, 2008
	HQ-1315	Unidirectional agent fails to import correctly - bi-directional agent works ok in same conditions	Mike Mennis	Mike Mennis		Closed	WON'T FIX	Jul 12, 2008	Jul 30, 2008
	HQ-1311	Exception re-configuring Resource Type Alert Definition	Charles Lee	Charles Lee		Closed	FIXED	Jun 26, 2008	Jul 15, 2008
	HQ-1291	Read-only users can modify escalation schemes	Charles Lee	John Sachs		Closed	FIXED	May 27, 2008	Jun 24, 2008
	HQ-1431	No Data in Saved Charts dashboard portlet	Richard Pack	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Sep 10, 2008	Oct 02, 2008
	HQ-1414	Group Permission issue	Charles Lee	Nipuna Bhayani		Closed	FIXED	Jul 31, 2008	Sep 19, 2008
	HQ-1373	Manually created platform service of the master platform doesn't get cloned to target platform	Patrick Nguyen	Ilaya Perumal		Closed	FIXED	Aug 14, 2008	Sep 24, 2008
	HQ-1370	The Platform Cloning dialog box doesn't get closed automatically after clicking the "Queue for Cloning" button	Patrick Nguyen	Ilaya Perumal		Closed	FIXED	Aug 12, 2008	Sep 19, 2008
	HQ-1364	NPE in RT zevent listener	Charles Lee	Jon Travis		Closed	FIXED	Aug 05, 2008	Sep 10, 2008
	HQ-1320	In unidirectional mode not able to register more than one agent for a given box with the same server.	Gerardo Viedma	Mike Mennis		Closed	FIXED	Jul 17, 2008	Aug 13, 2008
	HQ-1222	Upgrading from 3.2.0 to 3.2.1-Guest user email fields displays stack trace -not null property references a null or transient value:	Charles Lee	Nipuna Bhayani		Closed	FIXED	Feb 26, 2008	Mar 20, 2008
	HQ-1216	Control Actions date selector doesn not allow you to select current month	Richard Pack	Heather Tumey		Closed	FIXED	Mar 03, 2008	May 27, 2008
	HQ-1215	Roles created via Groovy do not have a dashboard	Charles Lee	Jon Travis		Closed	FIXED	Mar 03, 2008	Mar 17, 2008
	HQ-1194	Permissions error when activating or de-activating resource type alert from Monitoring Defaults	Charles Lee	Scott Morrison		Closed	FIXED	Feb 11, 2008	Apr 02, 2008
	HQ-1178	HQ installer log not found at full path given by setup.sh	Gerardo Viedma	Blair Hester		Closed	FIXED	Feb 05, 2008	Oct 02, 2008
	HQ-1174	Alerts firing for events 2 hours in the past	Kashyap Parikh	Blair Hester		Closed	FIXED	Feb 03, 2008	Feb 29, 2008
	HQ-1535	Agent Memory problem with forking zombie process - Solaris 10 x86 amd64	Todd Rader	Nevenka Bierny		Resolved	WON'T FIX	Dec 10, 2008	Mar 09, 2009
	HQ-1436	On Dashboard when portlets are moved around they don't stick	Charles Lee	Marty Messer		Closed	FIXED	Sep 08, 2008	Dec 12, 2008
	HQ-1435	On Dashboard porltets dont stick with click and release - need to click again	Charles Lee	Marty Messer		Closed	FIXED	Sep 08, 2008	Dec 12, 2008
	HQ-1286	UpgradeAgentBundle.groovy script fails the Auto-upgrade of agent when the agent bundle is transferred asynchronously (as Zevent)	Gerardo Viedma	Ilaya Perumal		Closed	FIXED	May 21, 2008	Sep 11, 2008
	HQ-1285	Hibernate is throwing org.hibernate.StaleStateException during batch approval of AI using the mass approval hqu plugin.	Scott Feldstein	Mike Mennis		Resolved	FIXED	May 19, 2008	Sep 03, 2008
	HQ-1283	Wide display ranges show "dontlog" RT data	Charles Lee	John Sachs		Closed	FIXED	May 15, 2008	Sep 30, 2008
	HQ-1280	java.lang.ArrayStoreException in server log	Ryan Morgan	Nipuna Bhayani		Closed	FIXED	May 09, 2008	May 22, 2008
	HQ-1271	SNMP Plugins break when you have more than one deployed on a single agent	Doug MacEachern	Marty Messer		Closed	DUPLICATE	May 01, 2008	Sep 08, 2008
	HQ-1264	Stack Trace when Scheduling a New Control ACtion for a Database Group	Richard Pack	Nipuna Bhayani		Closed	FIXED	Apr 18, 2008	Aug 04, 2008
	HQ-1262	Stack trace when trying to remove resources that are part of application from a group	Ryan Morgan	Nipuna Bhayani		Closed	FIXED	Apr 16, 2008	May 15, 2008
	HQ-1261	Create Action button missing for user with create escalation permission	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Apr 07, 2008	Apr 16, 2008
	HQ-1256	User with view only role is able update metric collection interval on groups	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Apr 07, 2008	Apr 16, 2008
	HQ-1251	Roles Add to list is empty for mixed groups	Charles Lee	Nipuna Bhayani		Closed	FIXED	Apr 04, 2008	Apr 15, 2008
	HQ-1210	Can't login as guest user	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	FIXED	Feb 26, 2008	Mar 18, 2008
	HQ-1207	Duplicate Group Alerts	Tom Keeney	Scott Morrison		Closed	FIXED	Feb 13, 2008	Mar 14, 2008
	HQ-1145	User Dashboard resets portlet configuration	Charles Lee	Richard Pack		Closed	FIXED	Jan 17, 2008	Feb 25, 2008
	HQ-870	When DurationTrigger Set Then Removed from MultiConditionalTrigger the Time Range Is Not Reset to Zero	Charles Lee	Tom Keeney		Closed	DUPLICATE	Aug 28, 2007	Aug 07, 2008
	HQ-663	CLI: resource export xml file includes angle brackets within an element	Ryan Morgan	Noah Salzman		Closed	WON'T FIX	Apr 27, 2007	Mar 20, 2008
	HQ-1484	Resource detail link in alert gives stack trace	Charles Lee	Blair Hester		Closed	FIXED	Sep 30, 2008	Mar 03, 2009
	HQ-1394	Auto-Group Measurement changes are not being saved when updated from the UI	Charles Lee	Patrick Nguyen		Closed	FIXED	Aug 27, 2008	Sep 13, 2008
	HQ-1197	Group Alert Firing Log Message is Misleading	Charles Lee	Tom Keeney		Closed	FIXED	Feb 12, 2008	Mar 03, 2009
	HQ-968	Some log events with blue squares are not expanding the log details popup	Charles Lee	Kashyap Parikh		Closed	WON'T FIX	Sep 25, 2007	Aug 13, 2008
	HQ-396	Alert actions not removed when resource is deleted	Charles Lee	Ryan Morgan		Closed	CANNOT REPRODUCE	Oct 07, 2006	Mar 18, 2009
	HQ-1220	Notification method does not show up in escalation view	Charles Lee	Scott Morrison		Closed	FIXED	Mar 06, 2008	Mar 17, 2008

Known Issues in 4.0

This section lists known issues.

Agent Startup Problem 64-Bit Ubuntu/Debian - There is known problem (HHQ-2387) starting the open source and EE 4.0 agent on systems with a 64-bit architecture running Ubuntu or Debian. Issuing the agent start command resulted in the following error message:

Starting HQ Agent....... /opt/hyperic/agent-4.0.0/wrapper/sbin/../../wrapper/sbin/wrapper-linux-x86-32: not found.

The agent attempted to use the 32-bit version of the JSW binary. To avoid this problem, the work around is to delete the 32-bit version of the library:

HQ_AGENT_HOME/wrapper/sbin/wrapper-linux-x86-32.

This will force the JSW to use the 64 bit version at HQ_AGENT_HOME/wrapper/sbin/wrapper-linux-x86-64, and the agent will start successfully.