Product Update, March 2020 (v20.3.0)

[Claudia.Landivar]

Table of Contents

Feature Enhancements

Heads Up - What Else You Should Know 

Beta Programs

Resolved Issues

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Ask a Question 

In March, we released the v20.3.0 Controller and Enterprise Console as well as key product enhancements and agent updates. We also resolved a series of issues associated with the previous release.

Please note: customers are advised to check backward compatibility in the Agent and Controller Compatibility documentation. 

What highlights should I know about?

These release highlights include the newest features and capabilities at-a-glance this month. In the grid below, we’ve flagged who may be most interested or impacted in your organization by each enhancement.

Category	Enhancement	User and Performance Analyst	Admin and Implementer	Developer
AIOps Platform	Root cause accuracy	✓
Cloud Native / Dev Ops	Debug code with Deep Code Insights			✓
	Improved .NET database coverage	✓		✓
Ease of Use	Actions CRUD APIs	✓	✓
	Dash Studio Enhancements: DB monitoring, ADQL variables	✓	✓
	Time zone controller setting	✓	✓	✓
	Updates to the Accounts Experience		✓

 

AIOps Platform

• Root Cause Analysis algorithm improvements: Part of a continued effort to help customers more quickly pinpoint the issues impacting their applications, a new ML algorithm will be deployed that will more than double the accuracy of our Root Cause analysis capabilities.

Cloud Native / DevOps

• Introducing Deep Code Insights powered by Rookout, which helps our customers dig deeper into application code issues to collect critical data and pinpoint the root cause of code issues in test or production environments. Reach out to your account rep or email dci@appdynamics.com to learn more.
  
  

• We’ve increased our support coverage for several major databases, including Oracle, MongoDB, AWS DynamoDB and Azure CosmosDB (Azure Cosmos DB SQL API client library). We can also instrument exit calls from our .NET agent to these databases. Learn more about our extended coverages to these major databases here.

Ease of Use

• We are continuing our alerting CRUD API investments! Following health rules and policies CRUD APIs, we now release new action CRUD APIs to programmatically configure, modify and delete AppDynamics actions. Learn more about these new Action CRUD APIs here.
  
  

• Visualize database monitoring metrics in Dash Studio to understand the health of your database platforms. For SaaS customers, users can now dynamically query ADQL data using dashboard variables.
  
  

• Easily adjust your time zone with the time zone controller setting to view data in any desired timezone, better collaborate with other users operating in different geographies, and more efficiently troubleshoot issues without having to translate differing timestamps. 
  
  

• We have rolled out a series of updates geared toward giving both SaaS and On-prem account administrators more robust and flexible management tools. Learn more about the new Company Overview and Personal Account management capabilities and the enhancements making it easier for you to view your AppDynamics license usage. (Updated 4/7/2020)

Heads up - What else you should know 

AppDynamics Java Agent v20.3.0 successfully tested for Java 14 Beta

We’ve been working toward support of Oracle Java 14, which was released on March 17. So far, the publicly available Java Agent v 20.3.0 has passed all our validations testing for Java 14 beta version. Following further successful testing of the GA version of Java 14, we’ll be able to announce formal support. Learn the details in Community.

AppDynamics’ change to calendar-based versioning

To help you more easily understand the length of support, compatibility, and stability, we implemented a calendar-based approach to versioning for all downloadable products starting March 2020. The release version format incorporates the date of release like so: YY. M. X (e.g., 20.3.0 for the first release in March 2020). For more information, read the FAQ here.

Share your feedback! Participate in a Beta today

• Submit feedback on the Dash Studio Preview through the in-product feedback button or on Community here

• Sign up for the Beta program for our Lambda Python Serverless Tracer using our self-service form. There's more information on our Serverless APM for AWS Lambda page. The tracer's language matches your AWS function code's implementation.

Resolved Issues

The following list notes key issues that were resolved in March 2020. To see a complete of this month's resolved issues, see Resolved Issues.

Analytics

• Analytics fails to sync with controller if Access Key is changed by using License Rules (ANALYTICS-10381)

• Page Name control in Browser Request Business Journey milestone unresponsive (ANALYTICS-12121)        

• Cannot remove Business transactions from Transaction Analytics UI (ANALYTICS-12183)

• Analytics - Table widget is missing progress bar and toolbar (ANALYTICS-12202)

• Tracking ticket for SECENG-2868 - Stacktrace propagated in status code while handling of ADQL exceptions (ANALYTICS-12472)

• jsessionid no longer appears in URL and server log (PLATCPS-14052)

Beta Support

• Backport changes to 20.3.next: Add INSTALL_AGENT permission to access token (L4A-11663)

Controller

• ZDT Controller restarts trigger re-transformation (AMCSEV-145) 

• Error graph shows correct information for time range greater than four hours (APMPLAT-12551)

• Controller UI: Customer time range selection is incorrect  (APMPLAT-13154)

• Upgrade of 20.3.0 is failing with alter table for unresolved_backend_call_info (APMPLAT-13185)

• Crash groups are now updated correctly with last seen timestamp for On-premise Controllers  (CDM-5802)

• Event Summary page shows exception when accessed via link from email (DIAGPLAT-516)

• SIM API not working for .NET agent in compatibility mode (SERVER-7017)

• ID column in SIM table changed from int type to BigInt type (SERVER-7345)

• 20.3.next - paid254: New Node creation event is added very frequently even without restart (SERVER-8100)

Database Visibility

• 20.3 hotfix - Incorrect Thread Pools for Cluster Agent Traffic (CLUSTERMON-1137)

• The Metric browser displays incorrect hardware memory usage when the hardware monitoring for the MS SQL server is disabled (DBMON-6004)

• None of the DB collectors are reporting after controller upgrade to 4.5.17 (DBMON-6193)

.NET Agent

• MSMQ backends resolving to downstream tiers (DOTNET-4309)  

• Applications crash in HTTP data collection due to changes in .NET Core 3.0.3 and 3.1.2  (DOTNET-4452)

Enterprise Console

• The MySQL Timezone file now installs in the correct folder for the Enterprise Console Windows installation (ECONSOLE-5711)

• Mysql configuration no longer disables the recovery of InnoDB pages           (ECONSOLE-5718)

• The table_definition_cache value was increased to prevent database schema upgrade failures (ECONSOLE-5747) 

• Add secondary job no longer fails when the volume mounted has a wider name  (ECONSOLE-5828)

Java Agent

• Node CPU spikes when running in Agentless Analytics mode after hitting Transaction Analytics license limit (ANALYTICS-12448)

Network Visibility

• Network Agent installed on Windows installs the NPCAP loopback adapter that can sometimes affect user traffic (NETWORK-6054)

• Request to fix read timeout and provide option to customize logging changes (NETWORK-6146)

PHP Agent

• Agent stalls the PHP-FPM process at startup (-PHP131.00)

• FuelPHP1.8: 404 User Experience is showing as normal (-PHP745.00)

• Magento2: BT Naming is not showing as Expected (-PHP749.00)

• CodeIgniter4: BT Naming is not shown as Expected. (-PHP750.00)

• CakePHP4: BT Naming is not shown as Expected (-PHP751.00)

• Report PHP Agent version and PHP Runtime instead of Proxy version and runtime (-PHP780.00)

• Agent not detecting DB queries with PDO (-PHP806.00)

• Change Oracle JRE to Azul JRE (-PHP807.00)

• Agent logging an error message with respect to _SESSION (-PHP812.00)

Machine Agent

• Machine Agent 20.3.1 Hotfix Request for SERVER-8069 (RELMGT-2223)

• 20.3.1 Hotfix Request for APMPLAT-13185 and Others (RELMGT-2230)

• 20.3.1 GA request for PHP Agent (RELMGT-2239)

• Machine Agent RPM upgrade from 4.5.6 to later version is not working (SERVER-6366)

• Update JRE bundled with Machine-agent to 1.8.0_241 from 1.8.0_212 (SERVER-8069)

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[chidi.uchegbu]

Hi,

Is Automated Root Cause analysis now supported on On-premise Controller?

[Claudia.Landivar]

Hello, @chidi.uchegbu. In answer to your question about Automated Root Cause analysis, these capabilities are only available on SaaS controllers.