Release Notes: Hotfix 1 Version 10.2 N-central 10.2 Release Notes: Hotfix 1
What is N-central?
N-central is the #1-rated remote monitoring and management automation solution for Managed Service Providers and IT professionals. N-central features a flexible license model, a selection of modules, and is available as on-premises software or as a hosted service. N-central is used by thousands of IT service providers worldwide to monitor your customer devices, proactively fix issues on their desktop and server systems, and automate patches, software updates, and other routine tasks.
About this Document
This document is current as of Tuesday, May 3, 2016. It includes new features and fixed bugs, and known problems for the following release:
l N-central 10.2
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What's New in N-central 10.2
Remote control
N-central 10.2 includes the integration of MSP Anywhere with N-central.
Improvements to MSP Connect:
• Faster connection times.
• Remote control of Mac devices.
• Terminal services support.
• Session report included in audit trail.
• Detailed system information, including Windows event log (Professional nodes only).
How it works:
• The remote device is configured and set up automatically by the N-central Agent.
• A locally installed technician viewer is launched from N-central for fast connections.
• Updates to the viewer and end devices are pushed automatically from the cloud with no reboots or configuration needed.
• MSP Anywhere can optionally leverage peer-to-peer connections for better performance.
• Detailed configuration for the connection is available through remote control defaults.
Professional devices will include many of MSP Anywhere's remote management tools including:
• A system shell to perform commands without interrupting the user.
• Robust system information including drivers, and installed applications for easy problem diagnosis.
• The ability to view Windows system and application event logs within the system information section for easy problem diagnosis.
• The ability to act on processes and services right from the system information section for quick resolution of common issues.
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Deprecation Notice
Please be aware that in N-central 10.3 we will no longer support the following technologies (where applicable).
Apple OS X 10.6, 10.7, 10.8
Disable Auto Update starting with the next dot release of N- central.
Windows Windows XP and Windows 2003
SolarWinds N-able will no longer support Windows XP and Server 2003. There will be no technical changes to prevent the installation or function of Agents, which will give you additional time to transition your devices to newer Windows versions.
As of October 1st 2016, we will no longer support these Windows versions for current, past, and future versions of N- central. Troubleshooting issues on Windows XP and Server 2003 will be done at best effort only.
Web Browsers Older versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Internet Explorer.
N-central only supports the latest versions of these browsers.
Remote Support Manager (RSM) Soft deprecation only. In N-central 10.2, RSM may work, but you cannot install a new RSM on agent.
In the next dot release of N-central, RSM will not be available for install or use.
NTR Connect All devices upgraded with a version 10.2 will now use MSP Connect for Remote Control.
If you do not upgrade to version 10.2 agents, Direct Connect will continue to be used for Remote Control until December 31, 2016. At that time, you must upgrade to a version of N-central that supports MSP Connect.
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Fixed Issues in Hotfix 1
N-central Server
Description Bug
Server Submit Queue deadlock with RemoteExecutionTask and MaintDelete. NCCF-2589, 78364
Server Submit Queue deadlock ServerUI: DeviceDelete. NCCF-2588, 77802
ServerIP changing to localhost when agent is not able to contact N-central Server. NCCF-2576
Attempt to downgrade using the NSP file leaves the upgrade failed flag turned on. NCCF-2506
Server Scheduled task did not run at the scheduled time. NCCF-2406
“Service network restart” failures in upgrade are now caught and logged instead of upgrade failure. NCCF-2355
Appliance.Utils.getApplianceUpdateStatus() checks the N-central version and not the latest down- NCCF-2345, loadable software version. NCCF-2210
“Scheduled Task terminated: The string was not recognized as a valid DateTime” error. NCCF-2327
Propagating Asset Discovery Enabled default option does not always create jobs. NCCF-2288
Device_history is being populated with large number of entries that is bloating the database and NCCF-2268 slowing processing.
Occasional inability to send XMPP messages to online/available agents. NCCF-2204
AV Defender will not install in some cases until the log level is changed to five (5). NCCF-1990
Duplicate Notifications received, one from Customer and one from Site. NCCF-1220
Need timestamp and TTL for some appliance actions/XMPP messages. NARS-413
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Security
Description Bug
Some Servers are not observable in the Update Server View. NSBM-926
AVD Profile fails to apply when the COM bridge drops the connection. NSBM-903
AV Defender Exclusions are not always used during device scans. NSBM-877
PSA
Description Bug
When Task Tickets are large then loading then can slow Server greatly. NPSA-845
ConnectWise: Multiple N-central Customers mapped to single PSA customer causes Billing profile NPSA-306, counts to update incorrectly. 74027
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Known Limitations
Active Issues
Description Bug
When exporting a large list of Active Issues items to PDF format at either the System or Service 62860 Organization level, the server may fail. Exporting to CSV format does not cause this problem.
Agents & Probes
Description Bug
An issue with the deprecation of support for SSL v3 may cause the upgrading of Linux agents from 71680 9.5.x to 10.x to fail. To resolve this issue, refer to "KBA20021: Upgrading Linux Agents from 9.5.x to 10.x" in the online help.
Communication issues may be encountered for N-central Probes installed on Windows servers 67778 that have multiple NICs. For more information, refer to "KBA20020: Configuring A Server With Mul- tiple NICs" in the online help.
Automation Manager
Description Bug
Running Automation Manager Policies created using Automation Manager 1.6 or earlier may result 65712 in Failed to create an EndDate ... errors if the Policies are run on a computer using a different date format. This issue does not affect Policies created using Automation Manager 1.7 or later.
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Backup Manager
Description Bug
ShadowProtect Data Reader service is using high CPU due to large amount of historical data as 74971 part of the backup.
The About Backup Manager dialog box no longer indicates whether or not the Backup Manager 68226 software is licensed.
N-central 10.1 supports CA ARCserve D2D R17 but that version of D2D does not support Windows 68435 XP.
Customer Services
Description Bug
Custom services may appear as misconfigured when the system locale of the device is not set to 65288 English. For example, in Portuguese the default decimal in c#/.net is not a period, ".", it is a comma, ",". If you are having this issue, please contact SolarWinds N-able Technical Support.
Dashboards
Description Bug
Modifying a Dashboard that is associated with a large number of services may cause performance 70326 issues when using the Firefox browser.
- 8 - N-central 10.2 Release Notes: Hotfix 1
N-central Server
Description Bug
With the complete removal of support for Security Manager - Endpoint Security as of Decem- 73491 ber 31, 2014, upgrading to N-central 10.0 will now fail if any Endpoint Security elements (includ- ing associated services) are present on devices managed by N-central. To avoid this issue, all installations of Endpoint Security software on managed devices must be removed. In addition, all services related to Endpoint Security must also be removed from managed devices in order for the upgrade to N-central 10.0 to succeed.
This issue has been resolved. Chrome 42.x does not support NPAPI plugins which means that Java 73359 and Direct Connect will not function with that browser version. When attempting to open remote control connections in Chrome 42.x, users will be repeatedly prompted to install either Java or the NTRglobal plugin with no successful connections made. To resolve this issue, perform the following: 1. In the Chrome address bar, type chrome://flags/ 2. Under Enable NPAPI, click Enable. 3. Restart Chrome.
When monitoring the N-central server using SNMP, the community string to be used for SNMP n/a queries to the server must use the required string value as the default community string ("public") is no longer valid.
An issue where Apple is no longer allowing Services to make calls for Warranty Information of a n/a device has been noted. You will no longer get the Warranty Information for MAC devices.
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Patch Management
Description Bug
If the device with the N-central Probe is using a version of Windows 2003 that does not have 68390 recent updates installed, it may not be able to establish a secure connection which will result in it not being able to download Third Party software updates.
Configuring automatic Third Party software patch approval for devices that use Windows XP® for 62277 their operating system may result in an excessive amount of time being taken before the patches are approved. This is due to an issue with how Microsoft® manages patch approval for Windows XP devices.
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS14-045 announced the withdrawal of four individual Windows 67830 updates due to security issues. This security bulletin applies to: • Windows RT and Windows RT 8.1 • Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 • Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 • Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 • Windows 7 • Windows Vista • Windows Server 2003 The following updates were withdrawn: •2982791 •2970228 •2975719 •2975331 If any of these updates have been installed on managed devices, refer to the security bulletin for more information on how to resolve any potential security risks.
It is strongly recommended that your Update Server not be a device that requires uninterrupted n/a disk access (for example, an Exchange server or a web server) as update functionality can be disk-intensive.
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PSA Integration
Description Bug
In some instances, tickets closed in PSAs are not being cleared in N-central. This is likely because 65620 the ticketing recipient profile in N-central has Do not change the Ticket Status selected (in order to manually configure tickets). Then, when the ticket is removed in the PSA, N-central will not be able to update/resolve the ticket's status and new tickets cannot be created for the same issue. Until a solution is available through the UI for this situation, the work around is to set a Return to Normal status and set a non-used status in the 'updatable statuses' section or set the same status as the return to normal one. This will cause N-central to add a note to the ticket on return to normal but will not alter the ticket's status. This will allow the stale ticket check to remove the ticket from the system.
UI
Description Bug
Product Key Card versions do not get picked up by the License Key Inventory. As Microsoft 61453 changes there licensing model, this information is not available any longer in the OS to be picked up and processed from the registry key. Microsoft is no longer storing the Product Key in the registry.
System errors or timeout errors may prevent very long lists of domain users from being displayed NID-63 properly in the Domain User Management screen.
When displaying Services in the Tools tab, the Click to try again feature to refresh the service 70965 display may not function properly when using Internet Explorer 9 or Internet Explorer 10.
After re-naming, the Names of files or Registry entries may not be displayed properly in the File 68149 System window and the Registry window of the Tools tab when using Internet Explorer.
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Upgrade Path and Notes
To upgrade, your N-central server must be running one of the following versions:
l N-central 10: 10.0.0.1722+
l N-central 10 SP1: 10.0.1.274+
l N-central 10.1: 10.1.0.145+
l N-central 10.2: 10.2.0.1062+
Note the following when upgrading N-central.
Before you upgrade, make sure you back up your data consistent with a date range for your Report Manager and N-central servers. You can select when doing a backup a date range. What needs to be said here is that they should be consistent if you are running RM otherwise data could be missing. You can change that date range in RM at any time for the data you want to report on. If they have done that then they possibly could be missing data in RM because it was not brought over. Unless Jon believes that is untrue. Remove it if that is the case.
Scheduled Tasks may expire if the Agent on an associated device is being upgraded when the task is scheduled to be completed. Agent upgrades are normally short in duration but may be delayed if a re-start of the device is pending.
Backup Manager does not certify Windows 10 support.
Patch events can now be scheduled in Maintenance windows for added flexibility and increased control. Please note the following:
l When you upgrade to 10.2, any scheduling currently done through Patch Profiles are transitioned into Maintenance Windows automatically. If you had applied your profile using a Rule, the windows will be cre- ated in that Rule and distributed accordingly. If you have applied a Patch Profile manually, the windows will be created at the device level.
l If you have accidentally targeted two or more Patch Profiles at a given device you will find multiple patch windows applied to your devices. To avoid this, review your Patch Profile distribution before upgrading. If your upgrade results in device level Patch windows being applied to some devices, they can be cleared along with all other device level Maintenance Windows from the All Devices view under Add Task > Maintenance > Clear Device Level Maintenance Windows.
You can upgrade to through the N-central Administrator Console (NAC) under Setup > Central Server > Version Management. This allows you to upgrade using the system upgrade file that has been automatically downloaded by the N-central server or by downloading the appropriate .nsp file from the N-able Resource Center at https://nrc.n-able.com/ under Support > Software Downloads.
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Support
View Supported Operating Systems
The tables below list supported OSs for Customer/Site Specific Software and System Software.
Microsoft Windows Windows Agents require both:
l Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.50727 (or later)
l Microsoft .NET Framework 4.x (or later)
Note: Unless otherwise specified, Windows Agents support both 32- and 64-bit architecture.
Windows Server l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter
2012 l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials
l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Foundation
l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Datacenter 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Essentials 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Foundation 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 Enterprise 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 Express 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 Standard 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 Workgroup 64-bit Edition
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Windows Server l Microsoft Windows 2008
2008 l Microsoft Windows 2008 Datacenter Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Datacenter Server without Hyper-V
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Enterprise Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Enterprise Server without Hyper-V
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Essential Business Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Foundation Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Foundation Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Standard Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Web Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Small Business Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Standard Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Standard Server without Hyper-V
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Standard Server 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Web Server
There are a number of requirements to install Windows Agents on a server using Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core 64-bit.
l OS must be Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core 64-bit SP1 or later.
l .NET Framework 4 for Server Core (64-bit) must be installed.
l .NET Framework 2 must be enabled using this command: start /w ocsetup NetFx2-ServerCore-WOW64
Windows Server l Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 R2
2003 l Microsoft Windows Server 2003
l Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server
l Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1
l Microsoft Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Web Edition
Hyper-V l Microsoft Windows Hyper-V Server 2012 64-bit Edition
l Microsoft Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
l Microsoft Windows Hyper-V Server 2008
Windows 10 l Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise & Professional
l Education editions
Windows 7 l Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise & Professional
l Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
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Windows Vista l Microsoft Windows Vista Business
l Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise
l Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
Other Windows l Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011
versions l Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 R2
l Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003
Red Hat Enterprise/CentOS Linux
Linux l CentOS 5 (32/64-bit)
l CentOS 6 (32/64-bit)
l CentOS 7 (32/64-bit)
l Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (32/64-bit)
l Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (32/64-bit)
l Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (32/64-bit)
Note: Linux installs require independent Agents for 32-bit and 64-bit OS installs.
Mac OS X Agent
Mac l Apple Mac OS X 10.11 (Workstation & Server)
l Apple Mac OS X 10.10 (Workstation & Server)
l Apple Mac OS X 10.9 (Workstation & Server)
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Supported Operating Systems for AV Defender
AV Defender software can only be installed on devices that use the following supported operating systems:
Workstation Operating Systems
l Microsoft Windows Vista SP1
l Microsoft Windows 7
l Microsoft Windows 8
l Microsoft Windows 8.1
l Microsoft Windows 10
Tablet And Embedded Operating Systems
l Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
l Windows XP Embedded SP2
l Windows Embedded Standard 2009
l Windows Embedded POSReady 2009
l Windows Embedded Enterprise 7
l Windows Embedded POSReady 7
l Windows Embedded Standard 7
Server Operating Systems
l Microsoft Windows 2003 Server SP1
l Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server
l Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 R2
l Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1
l Microsoft Windows 2008
l Microsoft Windows 2008 Server
l Microsoft Windows 2008 R2
l Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011
l Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011
l Microsoft Windows 2012 Server
l Microsoft Windows 2012 Server R2
Note: For Microsoft Windows XP Embedded SP2 and Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 7, TCP/IP, Filter Manager, and Windows Installer must all be enabled.
The Behavioral Analysis module is not supported on devices running Windows XP (64-bit). It is supported on devices running 32-bit and 64-bit editions of:
l Windows XP (32-bit only)
l Windows Vista
l Windows 7
l Windows 8
l Windows 8.1
l Windows 10
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Supported Operating Systems for Remote Control
The availability remote control connections will vary based on the operating systems of both the client and target devices.
Windows Linux Mac OS X Remote Control Type Remote System Technician Remote System Technician Remote System Technician
MSP Connect
Direct Connect
Custom
1 Remote Desktop
2 Remote Support Manager
SSH
TeamViewer
Telnet
Web
Note:
1. Requires a remote third-party desktop viewer compatible with Mac.
2. Remote Support Manager will allow you to connect to a device from a Mac OS X client but remote control features will not function.
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Backup Manager Support
N-central 10.2 is integrated with Arcserve UDP v5 Update 4.
For a list of supported OSs, applications, and disk types, refer to the following links:
l Supported Applications, Databases and Supported Operation Systems
Note: Windows 10 is not supported with ArcServe UDP v5 Update 4.
l Supported Disk types
- 18 - N-central 10.2 Release Notes: Hotfix 1
Licensing and Customer Support
Agent/Probe Installation Software
N-central 10.2 uses the 7-Zip file archiver for installing agents and probes. 7-Zip is free software redistributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, see http://www.7-zip.org.
Customer Support
Toll Free: 1-866-302-4689
Web Page: www.n-able.com
Technical Support Self-Service Portal: http://www.n-able.com/support/
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About SolarWinds N-able
SolarWinds N-able is the global leader in remote monitoring and management software for managed service providers and IT departments. SolarWinds N-able’s award-winning N-central platform and complementary toolsets, backed by best-in-class business and technical services, are proven to reduce IT support costs, improve network performance and increase productivity through the proactive monitoring, management and optimization of IP-enabled devices and IT infrastructure. SolarWinds N-able is 100% channel-friendly and maintains operations in North America, the U.K., the Netherlands and Australia.