Foglight® Agent Manager 7.1.0

Released with Foglight Management Server 7.1.0

Release Notes

September 2023

Contents

Welcome to Foglight

New in this release

Resolved issues and enhancements

Known issues

Third party known issues

Upgrade and compatibility

System requirements

Product licensing

Getting started with the Foglight Agent Manager

About Us

Welcome to Foglight

Foglight® solution simplifies application performance monitoring and reduces the skills and effort required to manage applications, the user experience, and the supporting infrastructure.
Unlike other solutions, Foglight uses a single code base, and has a model-driven design that couples fast deployment and accelerated time-to-value. It offers the modular flexibility required to deliver a range of capabilities and sophistication to meet the needs of any organization—from those still focused on technology-centric monitoring to those that have completed the transition to application-centric or transactional monitoring.

Foglight performs equally well in physical, virtual, and mixed infrastructure environments, providing visibility into issues affecting the application and end-user experience. Intuitive workflows help you quickly move from the symptom to the root cause in the application, database, infrastructure, or network to resolve issues, reducing mean time to resolution. Predefined and drag-and-drop dashboards provide insight that is tailored to each stakeholder. By offering comprehensive visibility into your monitored environment, Foglight helps ensure that cross-functional teams collaborate on and prioritize issues that matter most to the business.

Foglight Agent Manager

Foglight agents require the Foglight Agent Manager (FglAM) to manage their life-cycles and centralize communications with the Foglight Management Server.

For information about the supported platforms for the Agent Manager, see the System Requirements and Platform Support Guide.

These Release Notes cover the resolved issues, known issues, workarounds, and other important information about the 7.1.0 release of the Agent Manager. Review all sections before starting the installation.

 

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New in this release

Version 7.1 of Foglight contains the following new features and updates:

 

Security Enhancements

Foglight Agent Manager Enhancements

User Experience Enhancements

 

 

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Known issues

The following is a list of issues known to exist at the time of this release. 

Defect ID

Known Issue

FGL-20503

Fail to download the FglAM installer via server download page.
Workaround: Restart the Managerment Server.

FAM-7697

The connection test via installation GUI or headless would take about 2 minutes when FglAM and FMS are in different FIPS modes.

FAM-7559

Agents fail to monitor the WinServer2019 Domain Controller via DCOMWindowsCommandShell connection.

FAM-7365

The Infrastructure agent fails to collect the data due to the "Failed setting a value for obsolete node:" error.

FAM-7342

Part of data collected on the Host dashboard is missing due to ConnectionBrokenException.

FAM-7341

The CPU usage of the Agent Manager constantly reaches 100%.

FAM-7330

The "sqlserv.exe process" and "Memory Top Consumers" metrics collected by the Windows Agent are incorrect. 
Workaround: When FglAM running in Linux to monitor Windows, it is recommended to use WinRM instead of WMI.

FAM-7307

Many errors show in the Agent Manger log and there is no data displayed on the VMware dashboard.

FAM-7210

The Agent Manager version number is incorrect on the Script Console dashboard, after being upgraded to 5.8.5.5.2 from 5.8.5.5.1.

FAM-7209

FglAM-Adapter-Devkit-7.1.0 is missing after the Agent Manager is upgraded from 5.8.5.4.1 to 5.8.5.4.2.

FAM-7169

WinRMCommandShell returns empty output when using BAT scripts.

FAM-7116

WMI connection cannot be established successfully when using the IPv6 address to monitor the target host.
Workaround:
1. Set the agent's target host address and credential resource mapping to the long form, for example: fc00:0:0:0:0:0:a1e:9804.
2. Check if the WMI connection can be established. If not, change the agent's target host address from long form to compressed form (fc00::a1e:9804).

FAM-7023

Agents will be broken (FMS deletes them), after changing FglAM host name, IP, or display name. The agents will be recreated when the FglAM starts with the original FglAM display name.

FAM-6998

Cannot deploy multiple HA-aware gars to a standby host at one time.
Workaround:

  1. Log in to http://<foglight_home>:8080/jmx-console, and then click name = HAManager.

  2. In the page that opens, click Invoke for the diagnosticSnapshotAsString() API.

  3. Find the appropriate primary HA host (mState = PRIMARY).

  4. Log in to http://<foglight_home>:8080/, and then go to Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Agent Managers.

  5. Select the primary HA host found in step 3, and click Deploy Agent Package.

  6. In the dialog box that appears, select multiple agent packages to deploy.

  7. Click Next, and then click Finish to start the deploy task.
    When the deploy task completes, the agent packages deployed to the primary host will be automatically deployed to the standby host in a few minutes.

FAM-6942

HA failover fails and the value of mState on standby peers changes to MISSING_LOCKBOX in JMX console.
Workaround: If the failure of HA failover is caused by MISSING_LOCKBOX (Check the HA partitions info by navigating to JMX console > HAManager > diagnosticSnapshotAsString()), perform either of the following options to resolve this issue:
1. On the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click Administration > Credentials > Manage Lockboxes. In the Manage Lockboxes dashboard, release the missed lockboxes to the MISSING_LOCKBOX FglAM client. If you cannot find the missed lockboxes, perform step 2.
2. On the FglAM client that has the MISSING_LOCKBOX status, navigate to <fglam_home>\state\<state_name>\credentials. Clean up all files under this directory, and then restart the FglAM. After the restart completes, release all lockboxes as Primary in the Administration > Credentials > Manage Lockboxes dashboard.

FAM-6940

There are duplicate IP addresses for different FglAM instances (running on Linux) in the Agent Managers dashboard, if the FglAM servers are cloned virtual machines.
Workaround 1:

  1. Go to the monitored host, and then execute the following commands:
    su root
    rm -f /etc/machine-id
    systemd-machine-id-setup

  2. Restart the FglAM. Restart the operating system if this issue still exists after restarting the FglAM.

Workaround 2:

  1. Set system.id.enabled = false for all FglAM instances in the <fglam_home>/state/<state_name>/config/client.config file.

  2. Change the display name in the <fglam_home>/state/<state_name>/config/fglam.config.xml file, and then restart the FglAM.

Workaround 3: If you have cloned the servers, do not start up the FglAM. Set system.id.enabled = false for all FglAM instances in the <fglam_home>/state/<state_name>/config/client.config file, and then start the FglAM for the first time.

FAM-6934

Agent is not listed under "agents" property of FglAMClientInstance or Host object after moved.

FAM-6688

Support is required for installing and running Agent Manager on a system with SELinux enabled.

FAM-6439

Upgrades from 5.7.4 to 5.8.1 or 5.8.2 may result in an error during the upgrade process.

Workaround: If you are currently running a 5.7.4 install and you want to upgrade, then you must upgrade to version 5.8.5 or later.

FAM-5854

Foglight Log Monitor does not support UNC (Universal Naming Convention) paths.

Workaround: The following workaround applies when monitoring local log files. Monitoring remote log files is not supported.

  1. Map the UNC path to a drive letter on the local machine running the Agent Manager.

  2. If any monitored log files are residing in the UNC path, point the Log Monitor Agent to this location using the mapped drive letter, not its UNC path.

FAM-5832

Installing and configuring multiple Foglight Agent Manager instances on a single physical host can cause some topology churn in the Host model representing the Agent Manager.

Workaround: By default, the Agent Manager submits performance metrics about itself. If multiple Agent Manager instances are running on the same physical host, disable the performance monitoring self-metric submission for each Agent Manager Instance by completing the following steps:

  1.  Open the $FGLAM_STATE/config/baseline.jvmargs.config file for editing.

  2. Add the following entry to the vmparameter. properties section of the file:

    vmparameter.<X> = "-Dquest.glue.disable.performancemonitor=true";

    Important. You must replace <X> with the next numeric sequence number.

  3.  Save the file.

  4.  Restart the Agent Manager

Additionally, an Agent that submits a Host object representing the monitoring host (for example, an Agent Manager instance that is running and hosting an agent instance) as part of its monitored collection causes a Host topology churn when these agent types are deployed to additional Agent Manager instances running on the same physical host.
If the monitoring agent's type supports it, its configuration should be adjusted to prevent the submission of monitoring host system ID. For example, this configuration is available for the Foglight for Infrastructure Agents and can be disabled by setting the agent instances' Collect System ID property to false.

FAM-5600

The Agent Manager vm.config file migration fails under multi-state installs.

Workaround:  The legacy vm.config file is replaced with two new configuration files: client.config and baseline.jvmargs.config. Locate these files within the upgraded Agent Manager state instance. As these file instances may already contain transferred values from the legacy vm.config, review each of the settings in both of these files in order to ensure that these configuration options apply to the Agent Manager state instance that they are being copied into.

  1. Locate the vm.config file within the configuration state directory instance of the Agent Manager. The bottom of the file contains a section for defining vmparameter.x = ""; values. Copy over these settings from vm.config here into the baseline.jvmargs.config file.

  2. Review all of the options declared in vm.config with those of client.config that you have copied over. The client.config file is a super-set of properties from vm.config (with the exception of vmparameter values that are no longer defined here). So each property that exists in vm.config should also exist in client.config. Ensure that each of the common configuration values in the client.config file matches the values in the vm.config, and make any updates, if required.

  3. If the java.vm configuration parameter was set in vm.config, then you should update this option in the new client.config file. When transferring this value over, ensure that the path value is quoted and backslashes escaped. For example:

    Windows: java.vm = "C:\\shared_java_vms\\1.5\\jre";
    Unix: java.vm = "/opt/shared_java_vms/1.5/jre";

  4. After validating that all of the configuration settings are in their new locations, delete the vm.config file and restart the Agent Manager process.

FAM-5355

OutOfMemoryError: The Agent Manager cannot create new native thread. It shuts down when the open file descriptor limit is too low.
Workaround: When creating a large number of agents on a single Agent Manager instance, you must ensure that the maximum number of open file descriptors (displayed by the ulimit -n command) is set high enough. 256 is the minimum suggested for an Agent Manager installation and 512 or more is recommended for an Agent Manager hosting up to 15 agents. 1024 is recommended for an Agent Manager hosting more than 15 agents. This value may need to be adjusted even higher if more agents are created on a single Agent Manager install.

FAM-4955

Parentheses can cause a command execution to fail while using a LocalWindowsCommandShell connection.

Workaround: If parentheses are used for grouping commands (and not in an echo context), use spaces to separate them from the other tokens in the command. For example, instead of this command:

if 3 gtr 2 (echo "3>2") else (echo "3 leq 2")

Use the following:

if 3 gtr 2 ( echo "3>2" ) else ( echo "3 leq 2" )

FAM-2850

Slave processes exist for all installed out-of-process (OOP) agent packages, even if no agent instances are running.

Workaround: OOP packages which are not running any agent instances may be un-deployed from the Agent Manager. Currently, this is only possible using a manual procedure.

FAM-1972

The deployed agent scratch directory created for JFogbank-type agents is not deleted during an upgrade.

Workaround: The orphaned directory is benign, and can be manually deleted after the upgrade is complete.

 

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Third-party known issues

The following is a list of third-party issues known to exist at the time of this release. 

Defect ID

Resolved Issue

FOG-330

Get AccessControlException when executing HTTP requests in multi-thread tasks in the latest FglAM version.

 

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Upgrade and compatibility

The 7.1.x Foglight Agent Manager cartridge requires Foglight Management Server 7.1 or later

 

Agent Manager upgrades from a 5.5.4.x legacy release require an intermediary upgrade to 5.6.7 prior to upgrading to 5.8.5 or later. To complete this intermediary upgrade, install one or more of the Agent Manager 5.6.7 platform-specific cartridges (as required), and upgrade the legacy hosts to this release before deploying the 7.1.x Agent Manager cartridge or upgrading the Foglight Management Server to version 5.9.2 or later. After all of the legacy hosts are running version 5.6.7, and the Foglight Management Server is upgraded to version 5.9.2 or later, you can start upgrading your hosts to version 7.1.x.

 

The following is a list of Foglight product versions and platforms compatible in this release.

Product Name

Product Version

Platform
Foglight Management Server 7.1.0 or later All platforms supported by these versions of the Foglight Management Server
Foglight Agent Manager Development Kit 7.1.0 All platforms supported by these versions of the Foglight Agent Manager Development Kit

 

For more information about upgrading the Management Server and the Agent Manager, see the Foglight Upgrade Guide.

Back up custom JRE certificates before upgrading Agent Manager

When upgrading external Agent Manager, if the new Agent Manager uses a higher version JRE than the old Agent Manager, the JRE trust store (cacerts) in the old Agent Manager will be replaced by the new trust store from the higher version JRE. This will cause all the custom certificates imported to the old JRE trust store by customers get lost after the Agent Manager upgrade.

To keep the custom certificates, you need to back up the old JRE trust store before upgrading external Agent Manager, by following below steps:

  1. Verify if the new Agent Manager uses a higher version JRE than the old Agent Manager.
  2. If yes, copy the file <fglam_home>/jre/<current_jre_version>/jre/lib/security/cacerts to a local directory before upgrading Agent Manager.
  3. After Agent Manager is upgraded, replace the cacert trust store with the copied cacert trust store and restart Agent Manager.

As for the embedded Agent Manager, it uses the same JRE as the Management Server. If there are custom certificates stored in JRE trust store and a higher JRE version is used, back up the JRE cacert trust store used by the Management Server before upgrading Management Server.

Note: if the new JRE trust store has different entries than the old JRE trust store, there is a risk that these entries would get lost after replacing with the old JRE trust store.

Below is a list of JRE versions used by Agent Manager on various platforms in this release:

Platform

JRE Version

windows-x86_64

17.0.8

linux-x86_64

17.0.8

 

Note: To avoid the need for reinstalling the certificate after an upgrade, it is recommended to install an FglAM CA certificate using the fglam- -add-certificate method instead of the keytool command. For more information, refer to the Configuring the Agent Manager to use SSL certificates section of the Foglight Agent Manager Guide.

 

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System requirements

Final platform support notice

Support of Foglight Agent Manager (FglAM) on AIX, Sun Solaris, and HP-UX platforms has been discontinued on this release (7.1.0). FglAM installers are only provided for Windows and Linux platforms.

 

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Product licensing

Foglight includes a licensing capability that restricts access to those features that are defined in the license. All Management Server installations require a license that grants access to server-specific parts of the browser interface and the features associated with them. Foglight cartridges are also license-protected. While some cartridges are covered by the base Foglight license (such as Foglight for Infrastructure), others may require an additional license. Foglight Agent Manager is covered by the base Foglight license.

To activate a trial or a purchased commercial license:

  1. On the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click Administration > Setup > Manage Licenses.
  2. Click Install.
  3. In the Install License dialog box, click Browse.
  4. In the file browser that appears, specify the location of the license file.
  5. In the Install License dialog box, click Install License.

 

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Getting started with the Foglight Agent Manager

Contents of the release package

Foglight Agent Manager 7.1.0 is distributed with Foglight Management Server 7.1.0.

For information about what is included in the Foglight 7.1.0 release package, see the Foglight Release Notes.

Installation instructions

Refer to the Foglight Agent Manager Guide for installation and configuration instructions.

Additional resources

Additional information is available from the following:

Globalization

This section contains information about installing and operating this product in non-English configurations, such as those needed by customers outside of North America. This section does not replace the materials about supported platforms and configurations found elsewhere in the product documentation.

This release is Unicode-enabled and supports any character set. In this release, all product components should be configured to use the same or compatible character encodings and should be installed to use the same locale and regional options. This release is targeted to support operations in the following regions: North America, Western Europe and Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Far-East Asia, Japan.

This release has the following known capabilities or limitations: The Management Server and Agent Manager client will be enabled for Global Operations, but not localized to any particular locale. Consult the Global Operations statement for each agent to determine its own capabilities and limitations. The Agent Manager currently requires installation in a directory path with only ASCII characters.

 

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About Us

Quest creates software solutions that make the benefits of new technology real in an increasingly complex IT landscape. From database and systems management, to Active Directory and Office 365 management, and cyber security resilience, Quest helps customers solve their next IT challenge now. Around the globe, more than 130,000 companies and 95% of the Fortune 500 count on Quest to deliver proactive management and monitoring for the next enterprise initiative, find the next solution for complex Microsoft challenges and stay ahead of the next threat. Quest Software. Where next meets now. For more information, visit https://www.quest.com/.

Technical support resources

Technical support is available to Quest customers with a valid maintenance contract and customers who have trial versions. You can access the Quest Support Portal at https://support.quest.com.

The Support Portal provides self-help tools you can use to solve problems quickly and independently, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The Support Portal enables you to:

 

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Copyright© 2023 Quest Software Inc.

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