This week is an exciting one for us here at SolarWinds MSP, as we’ve got two really great updates for you – the introduction of the Custom Checks Library for Network Devices, and a brand new version of Automation Manager that introduces some amazing new VMware capabilities!

We’ve also released several minor performance enhancements and bug fixes, please see the release notes section below for details.

Custom Checks Library for Network Devices

Network Device monitoring is a key feature of SolarWinds RMM, and we’re very excited to let you know that we’ve just released a new feature – the Custom Checks Library – that makes creating, administering and deploying custom checks a breeze, whether you’ve got 10 devices or 10,000 devices.

What is the Custom Checks Library?

The Custom Checks Library, which can be found under the Settings -> SNMP Checks -> Network Devices menu, is the one central location where you can create, edit, delete and configure the deployment of SNMP checks for your network devices.

The Custom Checks Library builds on the Custom Check Wizard that released earlier this year. The Wizard is a great tool to use to add a check to a single device, but only works on one device at a time, which makes administering checks across many devices a bit more time-consuming than we’d like. That’s where the Custom Checks Library comes in – because it centrally manages all of your checks, it makes administering those checks really straight-forward and scalable, regardless of how many devices you’ve got under management.

But Wait! There’s More!

In addition to the awesomeness that is the Custom Checks Library, we’ve also made some really great updates to how you can monitor network devices – all thanks to your feedback!

• You can now CTRL-click devices in the North pane of the Network Devices tab, and bulk-apply a check from the Custom Checks Library (or create a check on the fly, using the Wizard)
• We’ve also updated the South pane of the Network Devices tab – you can now right-click on a custom SNMP check, and edit the check
• We’ve significantly updated the Custom Checks Wizard – you can now choose whether or not you want to save the check to the Custom Checks Library, you can make Metrics display only (great if you want to gather data, but not threshold against it), and we’ve simplified the Queries section by 47.65%.

What’s New in Automation Manager

We’re pleased to let you know that we have released an update to Automation Manager, the drag-&-drop script building tool that lets you create powerful custom scripts for checks and automated tasks – without the need to be a wizard at writing complex scripts!

VMware Objects

We’ve heard your feedback, loud and clear, that you need the ability to interact with VMware hypervisors in your automation workflows. We’re pleased to let you know that Automation Manager v2.13 takes a big step towards helping you in that regard, as it includes several new objects:

• Connect to an ESXi host or vCenter server
• Get VM Information
• Restart VMware VM
• Shutdown VMware VM
• Start VMware VM
• Stop VMware VM

We think that this is just the beginning of what we can do with VMware environments – we’d love to get your feedback as to what other VMware objects you’d like to see us add to Automation Manager!

How Do I Access Automation Manager?

It’s easy to take advantage of the latest version: In RMM, simply go to Settings > Script Manager, then click the Automation Manager download link. Install the app on your machine to start using the latest build.

Here’s a quick walk-through of how to get set up:

1. Go to the ‘Settings’ dropdown menu, then select ‘Script Manager’.

2. Click ‘Automation Manager’ in the top right of the dialog to download the new version

3. Open up the new Automation Manager to start building a new script. You can also edit existing scripts you previously created in the old version of Automation Manager.

4. Once you’ve created or edited a script, save it to your local computer. Then in the Script Manager dialog, click ‘New’ or ‘Edit’ to upload or update the script.

6. Once you’ve added it to your Dashboard, you can apply it to devices as a Script Check or Automated Task using the standard Add Check and Task options.

Of course, existing custom scripts created with the previous version of Automation Manager will continue to run without any issue.

Summary for Service Release
– Custom SNMP Checks Library for network devices, Automation Manager v2.13
– RMM Console v2019.09.16
– No RMM agent change

RMM Console v2019.09.16
FEATURE: Automation Manager upgrade to v2.13 with additional VMware modules
FEATURE: New Take Control Mac viewer (6.00.07)
FEATURE: New PSA integration support for times and notes entries in RMM
UPDATE: Faster loading of the Managed Antivirus and Patch Management ‘Settings’ dialogs
UPDATE: Improved icon for pending patches in the north pane
UPDATE: Option to set Service startup type to ‘delayed start’ in new remote background manager viewer
UPDATE: Managed Antivirus Bitdefender v6 now supported in the MAV-related API calls
BUGFIX: Resolved side bar navigation issue when clicking from NetPath to Filters to Devices
BUGFIX: Resolve issue when assigning automated tasks to event log checks
BUGFIX: Update to Automation Manager scripts to not strip out backslashes from script parameter inputs

Automation Manager v2.13
FEATURE: VMware Objects
FEATURE: Input Parameters can now be edited
BUGFIX: AM object “Find Top N Files” when run in RMM gives error “Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow.”
BUGFIX: We’ve made it easier to expand the Output Pane of the Automation Manager GUI. Sorry about that – it was a little finicky before