Release Notes for Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0

In this File

Release Notes for Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0

Release information

Product name

WhatsUp Gold

 

Version

v16.0

 

Release date(s)

v16.0.0 October 2, 2012
v16.0.1 October 17, 2012

v16.0.2 December 5, 2012

v16.0.3 January 29, 2012

 

New in WhatsUp Gold v16.0

The following is a list of the new and updated functionality added to Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0:

Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0 Standard, Premium, and Distributed editions

General

Monitors

Support has been added to the following monitors in WhatsUp Gold:

Wireless features (WhatsUp Gold Premium Editions)

The WhatsUp Gold Wireless features allow customers to monitor wireless infrastructure performance historically or in real time. It supports Wireless LAN controllers from Cisco and Aruba hardware vendors, tracks wireless access point (AP) and client history, and alerts operators to problems with wireless equipment.

Inventory features (WhatsUp Gold Standard and Premium Editions)

Added asset inventory and additional new Layer 2 features to WhatsUp Gold Standard and Premium Editions:

WhatsVirtual Plug-in

Flow Monitor Plug-in

WhatsConfigured Plug-in

New in WhatsUp Gold 16.0.3

The following is a list of the new and updated functionality added to WhatsUp Gold v16.0.3:

Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0 Standard, Premium, and Distributed editions

Discovery and device role changes

Dashboards

Reports

Fixed in WhatsUp Gold v16.0

WhatsUp Gold

This WhatsUp Gold v16.0 release includes the following fixes:

Category

Issues

Defect ID

Active Monitors

WhatsUp Gold's new polling engine corrected an issue that did not respect critical monitors when two or more of the same active monitor types was used on separate interfaces.

14981

 

Resolved a problem that caused the SNMP Active Monitor setting Rate of Change to work only when the polled value increased, now the Rate of Change also reflects when the polled value decreases.

17900

 

Devices monitoring ping using an IPv6 address now retry according to the retry settings.

18221

 

Fixed a problem that caused the rescan of a device from the device properties active monitors tab on the WhatsUp Gold admin console to reset the independent poll frequency on active monitors back to the default frequency.

18339

Performance Monitors

Fixed an issue that caused a "Too many interfaces" error when users populated the Interface Utilization monitor.

10242

 

Added a note in the Help that Disk Utilization Performance Monitor notifies users that Linux systems hold 5% of disk space in reserve.

17598

 

Fixed a problem that prevented users from modifying a performance monitor's Data Collection Interval.

19194

Reports

All interfaces now display on the Interface SSG report's configuration dialog so that users can select the appropriate interface to graph in Interface SSG reports.

12058

 

Fixed an issue that caused Remote TopX Reports to not work when they were added to a dashboard by anyone but the Admin user.

13980

 

Fixed an issue that caused IP addresses in the Address column on the WhatsUp Gold web interface to sort numerically rather than by octet.

15593

 

Fixed an issue that prevented users from viewing all available groups when browsing groups and logged in to WhatsUp Gold with LDAP/AD credentials.

17203

 

Fixed a WhatsUp Gold web interface navigation exception that occurred at times when users logged into the web interface.

17312

 

The SNMP Trap and Sylog Report no longer cause Runtime errors when report rows are set to 250 or more and there are a large number of traps or syslogs.

17320

 

Fixed an issue that caused an error in Alert Center's WhatsUp Gold Health threshold when checking the Flow Monitor database for bounce traffic.

17358

 

The installer now does not allow WhatsUp Gold to install IIS on domain controllers to prevent WhatsUp Gold web interface functionality issues that previously occurred.

17551

 

Fixed an issue that prevented users from launching the Device Status Report from the Map View unless user has Manage Device Groups right.

17693

 

Resolved an issue that allowed users to view other user group folders in the group/device picker on the WhatsUp Gold web interface.

17771

 

Corrected an issue that allowed web users with group restrictions to view devices outside their groups when selecting the All Devices dynamic group.

18109

 

Fixed an issue that prevented users that used LDAP credentials for an Active Directory user from exporting reports to .pdf.

18331

 

Fixed an issue that caused Remote Site Dashboards to not refresh after switching to a different dashboard.

18350

 

Fixed an issue that caused invalid and/or no device popup information when hovering over remote devices, in Remote dashboard reports, and lead to null reference exceptions in some cases.

18442

 

Fixed an issue that caused device-specific monitor reports to display a device other than the device originally selected.

18451

Flow Monitor Plug-in

Exports to PDF no longer fail when filters are applied to the Interface Details report.

17579

 

Fixed an issue that caused errors when users attempted to delete Flow Monitor sources that were manually added to the list of sources.

17585

 

Fixed an issue that prevented users from deleting Flow Monitor aggregate sources.

17724

 

Fixed a problem that prevented the Flow Monitor Source List dashboard report from displaying interfaces for Flow sources.

17733

 

Flow Monitor now supports 64-bit counters from Netflow v9 devices.

18236

WhatsVirtual

Fixed an issue that prevented the Instant Virtualization Workspace Report from loading.

15470

 

WhatsVirtual can now collect CPU and Memory Performance Monitor data for VMs that are not clustered on vCenter.

18293

Fixed in WhatsUp Gold v16.0.1

WhatsUp Gold

This WhatsUp Gold v16.0.1 release update replaces the WhatsUp Gold v16.0 release. The update includes new install scripts that correct some upgrade issues for specific environments and conditions only. There is one minor fix included to correct an artifact issue with some versions of Google Chrome. If you have already installed WhatsUp Gold v16.0, it may not be necessary to update to WhatsUp Gold v16.0.1, unless you have concerns with the Google Chrome artifact issue. An updated patch that addresses functional issues identified in WhatsUp Gold will be released separately in a later release. For additional details, see the notes below:

Category

Issues

Defect ID

Database

v16 database upgrade statistics errors. During upgrade installations to WhatsUp Gold v16.0, some users encounter the following error message:
The statistics 'ScriptText' is dependent on column 'ScriptText'.
ALTER TABLE HgL2DeviceDetails ALTER COLUMN L2Definition VARBINARY(MAX) NULL
The statistics 'ConfigDefinition' is dependent on column 'ConfigDefinition'.
ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN ConfigDefinition failed because one or more objects access this column.
Run the WhatsUp Gold v16.0.1 installer to resolve this issue. The database scripts have been updated to correct this issue.

20734

 

During install, a fatal message said that Microsoft SQL Server 2005 failed to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 R2. This is not a fatal error; you can now continue to upgrade allowing WhatsUp Gold v16 to operate with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. In the install dialog, click Yes to continue installing WhatsUp Gold.

20782

Install

During install, the upgrade encountered a trigger error message: Cannot drop the trigger 'PassiveMonitorActivityLog_DeleteTrigger', because it does not exist or you do not have permission. The 160012 script has been modified to prevent this error in the case where the trigger has previously been removed. Run the WhatsUp Gold v16.0.1 installer to resolve this issue.

20746

Web interface

Some versions of Google Chrome displayed an unexpected rectangle artifact on the WhatsUp Gold web interface Error Logs and Dashboard pages. The rectangle artifact has been resolved so that it no longer displays in the WhatsUp Gold web interface when using Chrome. Run the WhatsUp Gold v16.0.1 installer to resolve this issue.

20730

Fixed in WhatsUp Gold v16.0.2

WhatsUp Gold

This WhatsUp Gold v16.0.2 release update replaces the WhatsUp Gold v16.0 and v16.0.1 releases. For additional details about the issues that were corrected in this release, see the notes below:

Category

Issues

Defect ID

Actions

Actions now apply the "only if the following state was reached" setting when used in an Implicit Action Policy.

20756

Alert Center

Fixed an issue that caused alerts on disk drives that were not selected for monitoring on a device.

20753

Devices

Fixed an issue that caused a device group icon to maintain the color of the device that was removed rather than turning gray for an unknown state.

20640

 

Fixed an issue that caused polling of a device by hostname to work improperly on devices that use DHCP servers for IP address management.

20733

 

Empty device groups no longer cause incorrect worst state propagation on the device group.

20861

Discovery

The WhatsUp Gold help now indicates that only Device Session percent variables can be used in scheduled discovery email messages.

19819

 

Fixed an issue that caused a VMware discovery scan to add VM devices as additional IP addresses to existing virtual machines rather than adding as new VM devices.

20761

 

Fixed an issue that caused the discovery service to become unresponsive after a device responds to an SNMP query with unexpected characters during an SNMP scan.

20858

 

Fixed an issue that caused WhatsUp Gold Smart Scan discovery, when using a seed device that has multiple interfaces with assigned IP addresses, to add to WhatsUp Gold as multiple devices with one IP address instead of adding as one device with multiple interfaces.

20863

General

Added general WhatsUp Gold performance enhancements to help particularly with systems operating on the lower-end of the WhatsUp Gold hardware requirements.

20828

Monitors

Fixed an issue that prevented active monitor link line colors from changing after an active monitor is disabled and further prevented the active monitor report from reflecting the monitor's disabled state.

20699

 

Network interfaces used in addition to the default network interface are no longer ignored when polling for active monitors.

20743

 

Fixed an issue that caused unexpected changes in reported interface utilization data due to an "Automatic Detection" value found in interface counters.

20762

 

Fixed an issue that prevented users from modifying performance monitors after upgrading to WhatsUp Gold v16.

20763

 

Interface utilization graph calculations now respect the manually set interface speed in the data calculation.

20770

 

Fixed an issue that caused state changes to improperly function when devices with up dependencies on other devices have no assigned active monitors.

20775

 

Fixed an issue that caused the email active monitor to work improperly when the device to which it was assigned was assigned to a remote poller.

20811

 

Corrected logging issues for Custom SNMP Performance Monitor data logs.

20868

 

Fixed an issue that prevented the memory performance monitor from collecting data from some devices.

20875

 

WhatsUp Gold 16.0 now uses the UCDavis MIB to get CPU information from Unix/Linux devices.

20911

Program Options

Report Data help now includes the updated default settings for the length of time report data is stored for Performance Monitors.

20837

Reports

Fixed an issue that caused the Top 10 Disk Utilization dashboard report to show disks that were not selected during configuration of the coinciding performance monitor for a device.

20751

 

Fixed an issue that caused Scheduled Reporting to produce .pdf documents with no data.

20765

 

Fixed an issue that prevented performance monitor report graphs from refreshing after upgrading to WhatsUp Gold v16.

20801

Web Interface

Fixed an issue that caused various browsing errors to localhost after upgrading from WhatsUp Gold 14.4 or earlier to WhatsUp Gold 16.0.1.

20854

 

Fixed an issue that caused a wireless exception error that read, "The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly," in the Bandwidth performance chart.

20988

WhatsConnected Standalone 3.1.1

Layer-2 links now load and rebuild correctly when exporting to WhatsUp Gold from WhatsConnected 3.1.1.

20829

Fixed in WhatsUp Gold v16.0.3

WhatsUp Gold

This WhatsUp Gold v16.0.3 release update replaces the WhatsUp Gold v16.0, v16.0.1, and 16.0.2 releases. For additional details about the issues that were corrected in this release, see the notes below:

Category

Issue

Defect ID

Discovery

Fixed an issue that could prevent virtual discovery using the WhatsUp Gold Discovery Console from finding all VM guests associated to a vCenter Server or VMware Host.

21325

 

Wireless discovery now correctly identifies Cisco 2500 series WLC devices and their associated access points.

21189/21279

Map

Fixed an issue that caused maps exported to WhatsUp Gold from WhatsConnected to improperly display device types and icons.

17274

Performance Monitors

Fixed an issue that caused certain devices to display "N/A" instead of percentage used (prevented transmit data) on the Interface Utilization performance monitor after an upgrade to WhatsUp Gold 16.0.2.

21114

 

Fixed an issue that could cause custom SNMP performance monitors to constantly record a 0 value during polling, after upgrading to 16.0 or 16.0.2..

21134

 

Fixed an issue that could cause the NmPoller process to terminate unexpectedly with a "Sequence contains more than one element" error after enabling collection of performance monitor data on virtual guests.

21179

Reports

Fixed an issue that could cause an "Interface not found" error to appear in the Interface SSG Dashboard report when configured for a device with a large number of interfaces.

12058

 

Fixed an issue that caused only the first page of WhatsConfigured web report values to export to .pdf.

21052

About WhatsUp Gold editions

These release notes apply to all editions of WhatsUp Gold. However, some features referenced in the release notes are only available in certain editions. WhatsUp Gold is available in three primary editions. Each edition tailors features to meet the diverse network management needs, from small networks to those spanning multiple geographic locations. Learn more about WhatsUp Gold product editions and get a detailed view of the WhatsUp Gold product comparisons on the WhatsUp Gold web site.

WhatsUp Gold also offers a variety of optional products to provide a full-line of advanced network monitoring tools:

Optional plug-ins

WhatsUp Gold WhatsConfigured. This configuration management plug-in enables effective management of one of the most critical assets on your network—device configurations. It automates the key configuration and change management tasks required to backup, compare, and upload configuration files for networking devices. WhatsConfigured maintains and controls configuration files and alerts when any configuration changes are detected. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold web site.

WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor plug-in for WhatsUp Gold leverages Cisco NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) data from switches, routers, and Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) to gather, analyze, report, and alert on LAN/WAN network traffic patterns and bandwidth utilization in real-time. It highlights not only overall utilization for the LAN/WAN, specific devices, or interfaces; it also indicates users, applications, and protocols that are consuming abnormal amounts of bandwidth, giving you detailed information to assess network quality of service and quickly resolve traffic bottlenecks. WhatsUp Flow Monitor protects network security by detecting unusual activity, such as that exhibited by viruses, worms, DOS attacks, and other rogue activity directed at your network. Comprehensive reporting takes the raw real-time network traffic data from routers and switches and presents you with useful information to understand trends, utilization, and where network bandwidth is consumed. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor User Guide on the WhatsUp Gold web site.

WhatsUp Gold WhatsVirtual. This plug-in lets you monitor virtual environments using WhatsUp Gold. The WhatsVirtual plug-in provides WhatsUp Gold with the ability to discover, map, monitor, alert, and report on virtual environments. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold web site.

WhatsUp Gold VoIP Monitor. This plug-in for WhatsUp Gold measures your network's ability to provide the quality of service (QoS) necessary for your VoIP calls on your LAN and WAN links. After a simple setup, the VoIP Monitor accesses Cisco IP SLA (service level agreement) enabled devices to monitor VoIP performance and quality parameters including jitter, packet loss, latency, and other performance values. The plug-in's full integration with WhatsUp Gold allows you to easily view graphs and metrics for bandwidth and interface utilization and troubleshoot network issues that affect VoIP performance. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold web site.

Optional applications

WhatsUp Gold WhatsConnected. This application is a Layer 2/3 network mapping tool that discovers, maps and documents your network down to the individual port, making it simple to visualize the physical topology and understand device interconnections. This application is a standalone and is used separately from an instance of WhatsUp Gold. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold web site.

WhatsUp Log Management. This application suite provides comprehensive event and Syslog log collection, monitoring, analysis, reporting and storage for your network. The suite includes Event Analyst, Event Archiver, Event Alarm and Event Rover. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold web site.

AlertFox End-User Monitor. This application provides comprehensive synthetic web transaction monitoring capabilities from an end-user perspective. With just a push of a button, a browser-based recorder captures all the steps involved in a web transaction, so you can periodically exercise and measure mission-critical transactions as often as you need to. AlertFox EUM is offered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), has minimal software to install, and requires no long-term financial commitments. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold web site.

WhatsUp Gold Failover Manager. The WhatsUp Gold Failover Manager is designed to make your network monitoring and management tasks more resilient for high availability operation. It ensures continuous visibility into the health of the monitored infrastructure when the performance or connectivity of the primary WhatsUp Gold server is impaired. In such cases a secondary 'failover' server can be automatically set to take over monitoring tasks. WhatsUp Gold Failover Manager is integrated into the Alert Center for appropriate notifications and escalations. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold site.

WhatsUp Gold Flow Publisher. This application provides a unique insight and visibility into your network traffic for every device, whether they natively support flow monitoring or not. Flow Publisher makes flow monitoring possible for every network segment and for literally every device. By capturing raw traffic from the network and converting it into standard NetFlow records, Flow Publisher puts you in complete control and conversing in a language your users understand. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold site.

IP Address Manager. This application provides an automated solution to the cumbersome and error prone task of inventorying network address usage. IP Address Manager discovery scans provide you with an extensive breakdown of your network's subnets, DHCP, and DNS servers. These discovery scans can be scheduled to run automatically to gather up-to-date inventory information on a daily basis. Inventory information can be saved, exported, and distributed in multiple formats as reports. For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold site.

System Requirements

Operating system and virtual environment requirements

Important: There are known issues with installing WhatsUp Gold on a domain controller, therefore installing WhatsUp Gold on a domain controller is not a supported install scenario.

Note: While we recommend operating WhatsUp Gold on server class OSs, the following OSs are supported.

Ipswitch supports WhatsUp Gold operating on the following Windows operating systems:

Ipswitch supports WhatsUp Gold operating on the following Windows Server platforms:

Please note the following considerations for operating WhatsUp Gold in virtual environments:

Important: If WhatsUp Gold is hosted in virtual environments, to avoid licensing issues, make sure that you assign a static MAC address to the virtual machine on which WhatsUp Gold is operating.

Important: WhatsUp Gold requires dual-core processors @ 2.4 GHz (min). If you are installing WhatsUp Gold on a Virtual Machine, make sure that your guest VM has at least two CPU cores allocated to it. Refer to additional Hardware requirements guidelines in the table below.

Database requirements

WhatsUp Gold requires a database to maintain data about monitored devices, store system configurations, and save user specified customizations. The database may be co-located with the WhatsUp Gold installation, or may be hosted on a remote machine. Data services for WhatsUp Gold can be provided by the following database servers:

If you install WhatsUp Gold on:

You have these database options:

 

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Express Edition 32-bit or 64-bit Local/Remote

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 Standard
or Enterprise
32-bit or 64-bit
Local/Remote

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise
32-bit or 64-bit
Local/Remote

Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2
Enterprise or Datacenter
32-bit or 64-bit
Remote only

Windows 7 Ultimate

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

 

Windows Vista Ultimate
(SP2 recommended)

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

 

Windows Vista Business
(SP2 recommended)

Circle bullet grapic

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Windows Server 2003 SP2

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic*

Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic*

Windows Server 2008 SP2

Circle bullet grapic

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Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Windows Server 2008 R2

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

Circle bullet grapic

*Windows Enterprise or Datacenter

Warning: WhatsUp Gold will not function properly if the 'no count' option for the SQL Server instance which hosts the WhatsUp Gold database or the replication feature of the SQL Server for the WhatsUp Gold database is enabled.

Important: If using Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2, WhatsUp Gold must be configured to use a remote database. Installing WhatsUp Gold on the same server as the database cluster is not supported.

Important: WhatsUp Gold does not support non-English versions of Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2, or Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2.

Web server requirements

Web services are required for the web-enabled functionality and reporting provided by WhatsUp Gold. These services are provided by one of the following web servers:

If you install WhatsUp Gold on:

 

 

IIS version 7.x

IIS version 6

 

Windows 7 Ultimate

Circle bullet grapic

 

 

Windows Vista Ultimate
(SP2 recommended)

Circle bullet grapic

 

 

Windows Vista Business
(SP2 recommended)

Circle bullet grapic

 

 

Windows Server 2003 SP2

 

Circle bullet grapic

 

Windows Server 2003 SP2 R2

 

Circle bullet grapic

 

Windows Server 2008 SP2

Circle bullet grapic

 

 

Windows Server 2008 R2

Circle bullet grapic

 

 

Following is a list of supported web servers and specific requirements for each version:

Framework and accessibility requirements

WhatsUp Gold requires the Microsoft .NET Framework and other Microsoft packages in support of scripting and software accessibility. The following is a list of the required software framework and support packages:

Web and mobile interface requirements

The following web clients and mobile device interfaces are supported for use by WhatsUp Gold:

WhatsVirtual supported virtual environments

The WhatsVirtual plug-in supports virtual hosts and virtual machines running on the following virtual environments:

Wireless supported devices

Important: Because of the volume of data collected and stored for Wireless, we recommended that you use Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2, or Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2 to store the data collected by WhatsUp Gold. See Installing WhatsUp Gold using advanced options for more information.

The Wireless plug-in supports the following wireless devices:

Important: If you are monitoring Cisco Aironet Autonomous access points we recommend that you run IOS 12.3 or newer. WhatsUp Gold may report inaccurate data if you are using an older IOS version.

Flow Monitor software requirements

WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor has the same base system requirements as Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0. In addition, WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor requires:

Hardware requirement guidelines

The following hardware requirements provide minimum suggested guidelines for WhatsUp Gold installations.

Note: Because of enhanced features and capabilities, WhatsUp Gold v15 and prior users may experience increased CPU and Memory utilization with WhatsUp Gold v16.

Note: Hardware requirements vary depending on the WhatsUp Gold configuration. Increasing the number of devices monitored, number of monitors, types of monitors, polling intervals, or other configuration options can result in additional load on the server and database. Hardware configuration adjustments may be required to optimize performance for your network.

 

100 Devices /
500 Monitors*
minimum recommended

2,500 Devices /
12,500 Monitors*
minimum recommended

20,000 Devices /
100,000 Monitors*
minimum recommended

Processor(s)

WhatsUp Gold: Dual-core
(Physical computer recommended)

WhatsUp Gold: Quad-core
(Physical computer recommended)

WhatsUp Gold Server: Eight-core
Remote SQL Server: Eight-core
(Physical computer recommended)

Processor speed

2.4 GHz or more

2.4 GHz or more

2.4 GHz or more

RAM

4 GB

8 GB

WhatsUp Gold Server: 8 GB
Dedicated SQL Server:
32 GB (64 GB recommended)

Database type

SQL Server 2008 Express Edition

Dedicated Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 / Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Standard 64-bit

Dedicated Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 /
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Standard 64-bit

Hard drive

15 GB or more

OS/Application

15 GB or more in RAID 1

Database files

4 x 100 GB in RAID 10

OS/Application

15 GB or more in RAID 1

Database files

8 x 250 GB in RAID 10

Log files

2 x 100 GB in RAID 0

Temp database files

2 x 250 GB in RAID 0

For more information about moving SQL Server database and log files, see the WhatsUp Gold Database Migration and Management Guide

 

Network interface card

100 Mbps (1 Gbps preferred)

100 Mbps (1 Gbps preferred)

1 Gbps

CD-ROM or DVD-ROM

Required if installing from CD-ROM. Not required for download installations.

Required if installing from CD-ROM. Not required for download installations.

Required if installing from CD-ROM. Not required for download installations.

Video display resolution

1280 x 1024 or higher

1280 x 1024 or higher

1280 x 1024 or higher

Sound card

SAPI-capable sound card required for Text-to-Speech actions

SAPI-capable sound card required for Text-to-Speech actions

SAPI-capable sound card required for Text-to-Speech actions

Modem and phone line

Required for pager, SMS, and beeper actions; modem pooling is not supported

Required for pager, SMS, and beeper actions; modem pooling is not supported

Required for pager, SMS, and beeper actions; modem pooling is not supported

GSM modem

Required for SMS Direct actions

Required for SMS Direct actions

Required for SMS Direct actions

*The performance for the number of devices and monitors supported is dependent upon several system variables such as server processor and memory size, polling frequency, round-trip time (RTT) for polling distance, the amount of time for which data is archived in the database, types of monitors polled (for example, SNMP-type monitors are significantly more efficient than WMI monitors), and other factors.

Poller Requirements

WhatsUp Gold is capable of polling up to 20K devices and up to 100K monitors. Additional pollers installed on your WhatsUp Gold system transmit active monitor and performance monitor data to the WhatsUp Gold server. Extending polling activity across multiple pollers increases the number of devices for which WhatsUp Gold can poll and collect data to send back to the WhatsUp Gold system. This is referred to as clustered polling. Using clustered polling, WhatsUp Gold can efficiently scale polling operations to a larger number of network devices, ultimately providing the capacity to monitor and manage larger networks. Additional pollers may be installed on any Windows system on the network, other than the WhatsUp Gold server. For more information, see Using additional Pollers with Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0.

 

Minimum recommended
for each additional
clustered poller

 

Processor(s)

Dual-core

 

Processor speed

2 GHz

 

RAM

4 GB

 

Hard drive space for application

2 GB

 

Network interface card

100 Mbps

 

Installing WhatsUp Gold

Note: WhatsUp Gold v16 supports direct upgrade installations from WhatsUp Gold v14.x or v15.x.

The information provided below is supplementary to the instructions provided in the Installing and Configuring Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0 guide, which contains instructions for installation, upgrade, repair and uninstall. Before installing, make sure that you review the WhatsUp Gold System Requirements.

Important: There are two known issues documented in the Known Issues (Monitors) section below that may need to be addressed after you have completed the WhatsUp Gold v16 installation: 1) CPU and Disk performance monitor data not displaying in VMware Guest reports on an upgrade install and 2) Interface performance monitor data stops collecting data on VMware Guest on an upgrade install. These issues only occur, when you have upgraded from WhatsUp Gold v15 to WhatsUp Gold v16, on VMware guest systems when monitoring SPECIFIC CPUs, Disks, or interfaces. Refer to the Known Issues below for more information about how to correct these issues.

WhatsUp Setup

The application software for the following plug-ins is installed when you install WhatsUp Gold. When you activate a WhatsUp Gold license that includes a plug-in, the plug-in is activated and you will have access to that plug-in without performing any additional installation activities.

For more information on running the WhatsUp Setup program, see Running WhatsUp Setup in the Installing and Configuring Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0 guide.

Before installing WhatsUp Gold

Installing WhatsUp Gold is a simple straightforward process, however there are several decisions that you must make, and options that you should be aware of before you install WhatsUp Gold.

Configuring ELM Reports for WhatsUp Gold

WhatsUp Gold version 16.0 provides integration with the Event Log Management central database. For access to ELM reports and data, you must also have ELM products, specifically WhatsUp Event Archiver and/or WhatsUp Event Alarm, configured to send collected log data to a MS SQL Server. WhatsUp Gold accesses report data through stored procedures in the ELM database. For more information, see Using ELM Reports in Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold v16.0.

Troubleshooting

Potential SQL Server Express installation errors

Configuring the firewall to allow WMI traffic

WhatsUp Gold uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to monitor and restart Windows Services. For each device that is assigned an NT Service Active Monitor, you must supply the Windows credentials. Also, when creating a Service Restart Action, you must supply Windows credentials for each Action. Credentials must have administrative permissions on the remote server. Local accounts with credentials that match remote accounts are no longer required to monitor remote servers.

Credentials are configured in the WhatsUp Gold Credentials Library and used in several places throughout WhatsUp Gold. They can also be associated to devices in Device Properties > Credentials, or through Bulk Field Change for Credentials.

The use of WMI could have some implications if target devices are behind a firewall. To successfully monitor and/or restart NT Services, you need to modify firewall settings so that:

  1. The RPC port (135) is open for connections.
  2. The DCOM port range is defined and open for connections.

For more Troubleshooting information, see the Troubleshooting section in the application Help or User Guide.

Known issues in WhatsUp Gold v16.0/v16.0.1/v16.0.2/v16.0.3

The following are known issues in WhatsUp Gold v16.0 / v16.0.1 / v16.0.2/16.0.3:

Category

Issues

Defect ID

Permissions

If you are upgrading from a prior version of WhatsUp Gold to v16.0.3 and have Group Access Rights enabled, you must set permissions for the new Layer 2 Maps device group after the upgrade completes. For security purposes, group access rights for this new group must be set by an administrator.

N/A

Database

During install, the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 upgrade failed due to SQL Server 2008 R2 Native Client being already installed on the WhatsUp Gold server. To workaround this issue, uninstall SQL Server 2008 R2 Native Client, restart the WhatsUp Gold system, then re-run the WhatsUp Gold installation program.

20739

Discovery

The "Use SNMP SysName to name devices" and "Resolve host names" discovery options cannot be used together - The discovery option "Use SNMP SysName to name devices" does not work if the "Resolve host names" option is enabled. To use the "Use SNMP SysName to name devices" option, disable the "Resolve host names" option.

21342

 

Discovery issue for large sets of devices - In some cases, during discovery or when adding devices that have been discovered in WhatsUp Gold, an error message may occur that indicates a script timed out for the AjxDeviceList.asp page. This error may occur when attempting to discover too many devices (more than 10K) in a single discovery. If this occurs, change the discovery options to reduce the number of potential devices discovered in a single discovery session.

19203

 

Scheduled Discovery start time format issue - The Start Time setting in the WhatsUp Gold console Scheduled Discovery Settings dialog displays in the 24 hour format regardless of the Program Options Regional settings selection.

19535

 

Rescan feature does not respect interface naming priorities - When you use Active Monitors Rescan (rediscover) from the WhatsUp Gold console application, rescan searches for the device ifAlias, it does not search for ifName, but rather skips to ifDescr if no ifName is found. Because of the rescan process difference in the WhatsUp Gold console application, the original interface comments in the device list may change when you use Rescan.

19931

Install

New WhatsUp Gold install error on Windows 2003, causing HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found error - When installing a new WhatsUp Gold build on a PC that is running Windows 2003, you must add a wildcard application mapping in IIS6 in order to correctly display the web interface. For more information, see KB Article: Getting the Web page error "HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found" at the log in page after installing WhatsUp Gold on a Win2k3 (64bit or 32bit) system.

18226

 

Cannot browse for existing SQL Server installation from WhatsUp Gold install application - When installing WhatsUp Gold and opting to use and existing installation of SQL Server, you must enter the SQL Server name manually as the WhatsUp Gold installer does not currently support browsing to the SQL Server name.

18949

 

Ipswitch TFTP Server install issue - In some install cases during a WhatsUp Gold installation process, users may experience a message that says Ipswitch TFTP Server failed to install. To work around this issue, go to the install folder (usually \Program Files\Ipswitch\TFTP Server). Run the ETKTftp.exe application installer. The TFTP Server software installs. After the TFTP Server software installs, run the WhatsUp Gold installer again.

19042

Maps

Wireless and WhatsVirtual Maps display issue with IE 8 - Wireless and WhatsVirtual maps do not display in Internet Explorer 8. Users running Windows 2003 must use an alternate web browser to view maps.

N/A

Monitors

Performance Monitor Split Second Graph issue - When WMI on a target device stops responding, Split Second Graphs (SSG) may cause the WhatsUp Gold web interface to freeze.

17775

 

Wireless historical IP address update issue - The IP address information in a wireless database table gets updated if the IP address of a client device changes. This will cause historical information on the Clients page to show the current IP address for historical sessions and not necessarily the IP address at the time of the session. This could cause an IP address for a historical time window to not be associated to a client, or could cause the wrong client (because it now has the IP address) to be associated.

19152

 

CPU and Disk performance monitor data not displaying in VMware Guest reports on an upgrade install - CPU and Disk performance monitors on VMware guest systems (when monitoring SPECIFIC CPUs and Disks only on a VM Guest) do not show data in the report graph after upgrade from WhatsUp Gold v15 to WhatsUp Gold v16. To correct this issue, right-click the device for which you want to apply the CPU and Disk Utilization performance monitor properties, then click Properties > Performance Monitors. The Device Properties Performance Monitors dialog appears. Select CPU Utilization and/or Disk Utilization options. The report data will begin displaying in reports.

20532

 

Interface performance monitor data stops collecting data on VMware Guest on an upgrade install - Interface performance monitors on VMware guest systems (when monitoring by SPECIFIC interfaces only on a VM Guest) stop polling after an upgrade from WhatsUp Gold v15 to WhatsUp Gold v16. To correct this issue, right-click the device for which you want to apply the Interface Utilization performance monitor properties, then click Properties > Performance Monitors. The Device Properties Performance Monitors dialog appears. The Device Properties Performance Monitors dialog appears. Select the Interface Utilization option. The data will begin collecting and displaying in associated reports.

20534

Powershell

PowerShell only supports the LOCAL SYSTEM account and cannot access snap-ins from other user profiles.

N/A

Reports

Scheduled Reports upgrade issue - Scheduled reports created in versions of WhatsUp Gold prior to v15 may not work correctly following a WhatsUp Gold upgrade and need to be re-created if issues occur. There should be no issues if the report URL is corrected.

17349

 

Wireless Dashboard Report issues - When multiple controllers or autonomous access points have the same SSID configured, but poll at different latencies as shown in the examples below, bandwidth and client count data may display incorrectly. "Gaps" may appear briefly between polling samples or some polls may appear with less or more data than expected.
Example 1. Two controllers, one with a small number of access points and clients, and another with a large number of access points and clients. The controller with the "large environment" will take longer to poll.
Example 2. Two controllers with the same number of access points and clients. One controller is located on the same physical LAN as the WhatsUp Gold computer, the other controller is accessed over a transoceanic VPN tunnel. Due to the network latencies inherent to the VPN connection, the second controller will take longer to poll.
To workaround this issue, increase your global wireless polling interval. For most users, the default interval of 5 minutes is unlikely to exhibit this problem. However, if you have reduced your polling interval and the difference between average polling speed amongst the controllers is very high (more than two minutes), you may need to increase the polling interval slightly.

19334

Web interface

Device Bulk Field Change - When you apply a custom performance monitor Bulk Field Change for a group of devices, the Data collection interval data changes back to the default 10 minutes setting each time the dialog refreshes. You can work around this issue by first selecting all of the performance monitors you want to enable, set the Data collection interval times for each monitor, then click OK.

16927

 

LDAP Paging Support issue The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol client library used by WhatsUp Gold (OpenLDAP) does not support paging. Depending on your version of Windows, if you have more than 1000 Active Directory groups, only the first 1000 will be returned in an LDAP query. Any groups not returned cannot be retrieved and subsequently cannot be used with WhatsUp Gold. For more information, see the related KB article, LDAP-Unable to add domain group.

17299

 

Device Groups not displayed on browser - When running WhatsUp Gold on Internet Explorer 9, the Device Group on the WhatsUp Gold web interface does not display unless you add http://127.0.0.1 to Internet Explorer's Intranet Zone.

18658

 

Web interface IPv6 incompatibility - When WhatsUp Gold is installed on an IPv6 enabled system, make sure that you use IPv4 compatible addresses to access the WhatsUp Gold web interface.

18998

 

Viewing Device/Device Discovery Tab in IE9 The Device tab and Device Discovery tab in the WhatsUp Gold web interface does not display properly when using Internet Explorer 9 on a computer running Microsoft Server 2008 R2. To solve this setting issue:

  1. Click the Tools (IE9ToolsIcon) icon, then select Internet options. The Internet Options dialog appears.
  2. On the Security tab, click Custom level. The Security Settings – Internet Zone dialog appears.
  3. Go to the ActiveX controls and plug-ins > Binary and script behaviors section, then select Enable.
  4. Click OK to save changes.

19044

 

Multiple login attempts with Google Chrome browser - When you clear the Google Chrome browser cache, in some cases, you may have to attempt logging in to the WhatsUp Gold web interface up to three times before a successful login occurs.

19179

 

Web interface hover popup update issue with IE 8 and 9 - The hover pop-up state is not updated beyond the first time you hover your mouse over a device in IE 8 and 9. After this information is cached, the state information is not updated until you log out and log back into WhatsUp Gold again.

19435

 

Group Policy Object 503 Service Unavailable Error - A Group Policy Object (GPO) applied on your domain which has removed or altered the user rights of the WhatsUpGold_User account on the WhatsUp Gold server can cause a generic 503 Service Unavailable Error to be displayed following WhatsUp Gold installation. To correct the error and verify/restore applicable settings, see Group Policy Object 503 Service Unavailable Error.

N/A

 

Wireless and virtual features regional date format issue - WhatsUp Gold wireless and WhatsVirtual features may display report information in a regional date format that does not match other WhatsUp Gold regional date formats. To correct this issue, see the related KB article, Changing WhatsUp Gold v16 regional date format for WhatsUp Gold wireless and WhatsVirtual features.

N/A

VMware

VMware host recognition error - When a single VMware host uses multiple IP addresses and are added to WhatsUp Gold via Smart Scan in the web interface or console application, you may encounter errors when configuring monitors for the VMware host. If this occurs, manually change the VMware device IP address (Device Properties > General > Address) to another VMware IP address that the host uses so that WhatsUp Gold will recognize the VMware host correctly.

19259

Flow Monitor Plug-in

Flow Monitor Group name limitations - Flow Monitor Group names do not allow for names that use special characters (such as !@#$%^&*()_+{}:").

19515

WhatsConfigured Plug-in

Adding a VLAN to a Foundry switch - When adding a VLAN to a Foundry switch using WhatsConfigured plug-in, ports must be added to the VLAN in order for the VLAN to actually be created on the device. Prior to adding ports to the VLAN WhatsConfigured will report the operation is successful, but SNMP packets are not sent to the device until ports are added. Rediscovery of the device before adding ports will result in the VLAN being removed from WhatsConfigured because it does not yet exist on the device. Users must first assign a port to the VLAN on the switch prior to rediscovery. For more information, see the related KB article, Adding a VLAN to a Foundry switch reports success but does not send SNMP packets to the device and no VLAN is created.

20365

For more information

Following are information resources for WhatsUp Gold. This information may be periodically updated and available on the WhatsUp Gold web site.


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