WOTAN 9: Distributed Monitoring & Security
WOTAN 9 provides easy administration of distributed monitoring environments, more dashboard features, new security mechanisms and as always various features based on our users requests.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our users for their precious feedback and suggestions helping us to continuously improve the quality of WOTAN Monitoring.
WOTAN 9 Appliance & Security
The latest version of our appliance is available on our download site. Application and operating system upgrades are provided in a single upgrade file and can be installed like any other WOTAN update.
This release contains all WOTAN 9 application updates, upgraded modules and the new operation system SUSE® 15.1. Detailed installation instructions are also provide on the download site.
A security review executed by independent specialists confirm the high security standards of WOTAN.
The following new security features has been implemented for WOTAN 9:
- Extra security layer for users without administration privileges
Users and admins can access WOTAN on two different ports. All actions of non-admins are executed in an isolated LXC container with no read/write privileges of sensitive data. - Application Firewall
WOTAN provides a new application firewall for identifying and preventing suspicious activities. - Centralized Logging
Access to the appliance can be logged on a central storage (e.g.: SysLog, database, file)
Do you need help for hardening WOTAN? Contact us!
Monitoring configuration for users
In WOTAN 9 users without administration privileges can be authorized to create new hosts based on custom templates. A multi-level Change-Request process allows non-administrators to create new hosts without weakening the system's security, since these requests have to be approved by administrators. Using template variables gives the administrator full control what data the users have to provide.
Managed monitoring configuration in distributed environments
It is now possible to manage multiple WOTAN sites in one GUI. One WOTAN is serving as manager and contains the whole configuration. Hosts can be assigned to one (or more) sites and all checks will be executed on the selected remote site.
Advantages of managed WOTAN monitoring sites:
- Clear overview of all hosts
- Standardized naming of CIs (Hostgroups, servicegroups, timeperiods, ...)
- Standardized configuration of timeperiods, notifications, templates, ...
- Easy switching hosts between WOTAN sites
- Avoiding of duplicate CIs
Easy Update of multiple Hosts und Services
Changes on multiple hosts and services are now more intuitive and transparent. Changes can be deployed with multiple filters (Groups, Names, Templates,...). Before deploying a change all affected configuration settings can be reviewed in preview mode.
I have a question about managing the monitoring configuration
Recurring Downtimes
WOTAN 9 provides the possibility to define periodic downtimes. The new CI creates recurring downtimes automatically. Downtimes can be defined for hostgroups, servicegroups, hosts or services. As for normal downtimes it is possible to define flexible as well as fixed downtimes.
As known from timeperiods weekly repeating downtimes can be scheduled, but also more individual dates are supported (e.g.: every first Monday of a month).
Dashboards & Views
These new views and dashboard features have been implemented in WOTAN 9:
- Filtering Dashboards by role permissions
The content of dashboards have always depend on the users permissions or filters in the dashboard widgets. Now it is possible to filter dashboards automatically by role permissions. This means that only one dashboard template has to be created for providing different views with the same layout, but different content.
E.g.: Creating two dashboards with the same layout.
One dashboard should display all Windows server, the other dashboard should display all Linux server. Until now two dashboard templates were required. Now only one template is necessary and this template has to be assigned to the role Windows-Admins and to the role Linux-Admins. Adjustments to the layout has to be done only once and will affect both dashboards. - Default Settings for users
Changing the settings on forms and views are stored automatically and will be used as default (e.g.: layout/columns in the event view of a host or service) - Exporting events
The Event-Widget supports downloading events as CSV file - Business Process Widget for users
This widget is now available for users by a new permission. - Message of the Day Admins can now display system messages in the lower menu bar or by PopUp
- Support for alternative OpentStreet Map Tiles
- Various new Widget filters and settings
Port Monitoring
A new view provides detailed port information of monitored network devices. As soon as IO monitoring is enabled for a device, the view is available automatically. Besides the listing of all available ports, including state, speed, input, output, errors and IO-charts it is possible to create detailed port checks directly in this view.
Reports
- The new event report lists all events of a specified timeperiod including charts and can be exported to PDF.
- Event and state reports can be scheduled with the WOTAN Report Scheduler
- Custom reports can be scheduled with the WOTAN Report Scheduler.