Tuesday, 09 November 2021 / Published in Brand, Ipswitch, Product, Progress

WhatsUp Gold 2021 IT Infrastructure Monitoring Solution

WhatsUp Gold or well known as WUG is IT network performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD) , IT infrastructure Monitoring (ITIM) domain solution that widely adopt for the various IT availability and performance monitoring, from infrastructure device, server, IT services, application performance to modern multi cloud, virtualized environment, wireless network, network traffic analysis (NTA) for link bandwidth visibility, network configuration change management, to end user monitoring, all-in-one single solution, the feature set depend on the edition and entitlement. WhatsUp Gold 2021 is Progress (formerly Ipswitch) flagship network monitoring software that continues to be heavily used by multinational corporations, datacenter to various specific network management systems (NMS), server and IT services monitoring, and widely presence in the network operation center (NOC) use case.

WhatsUp Gold combines monitoring with powerful alerting, notification, and policy mechanisms to keep network infrastructure, services, and applications running smoothly and stakeholders informed whenever issues arise. WhatsUp Gold ensures network administrators and managers have 360-degree visibility, actionable intelligence, and complete control to make smarter decisions faster.

WhatsUp Gold can monitor, report, alert, and take action based on the status of network devices, host systems, and services. To start, it discovers and reports on any connected assets within minutes, while leveraging several detection techniques and a comprehensive library to manage credential types.

The latest version of WhatsUp Gold enable you to discover, manage, and explore WhatsUp Gold-discovered and WhatsUp Gold-monitored devices, visually, either as a network map, or a device table, or both. The map and table work together to provide status at a glance and quick drill down into device details when you need to know more than just operating state and basic attributes.

WhatsUp Gold Latest Release

v2021 – January 20, 2021
v2021 (21.0.1) February 18, 2021 (updated)
v2021 (21.0.2) March 24, 2021 (updated)
v2021 (21.0.3) August 3, 2021(updated)
v2021.1 (21.1) September 16th, 2021
v2021.1.1 (21.1.1) November 9th, 2021 (updated)

What’s New in WhatsUp Gold 2021

Log Management

The new WhatsUp Gold Log Management add-on allows you to collect Windows Event Log and Syslog events from any available device configured as a log data source. In addition to simply collecting log data, you can customize WhatsUp Gold to collect events that fit your specific needs by defining search criteria and applying several common and/or format-specific filters when viewing corresponding reports and dashboard views.

Enhanced Report Scheduling

WhatsUp Gold users can schedule automatic report generation and distribution with more efficiency and accuracy due to the new report rendering engine. Report data rendering has now been optimized for visual aesthetic as well as ease of printing and/or file sharing.

New Device Support

HPE 2930 switches are now supported devices and can be successfully discovered and monitored by WhatsUp Gold.

REST API

Use the new REST API performance monitor to retrieve data from any device or application on your network that supports REST API endpoints and the corresponding active monitor to track the status of any REST API that supports anonymous and basic authentication.

APM Profile for MySQL 8.0

Additional improvements

Enhanced visibility of specific poller usage
Updated user interface for Active Monitors and External Authentication
WhatsUp Gold now respects the browser timeout set in IIS

What’s New in WhatsUp Gold 2021.1

OpenID Connect authentication.

WhatsUp Gold now offers an additional OpenID Connect option for users who require external authentication and want a faster way to manage individual user rights. OpenID Connect gives you the ability to configure permissions across the application based on mapping OpenID groups to WhatsUp Gold user groups.

HTTPS binding Protocol option during installation.

As part of the effort to increase the security WhatsUp Gold, the application is now being shipped with the option to enable HTTPS by default.

Enhanced Device Group Access Rights configuration settings and user interface.

The Device Group Access Rights configuration dialog has been enhanced for clarity and ease of user. It allows you to enable/disable permissions for multiple users and/or user groups based on their device group membership with a single click. Here, you can also search for specific users or user groups as well as make changes to the membership of the selected group by adding and removing individual users or user groups without navigating away from the dialog.

User Permissions dashboard view.

The ANALYZE > Dashboards sub menu now contains a dedicated dashboard for reviewing and managing device group access rights. This dashboard presents all rights and assignments currently configured in your instance of WhatsUp Gold within a single view.

Configure Scripts user right.

This new user right enables users to a create, edit, and remove device-specific active and performance script monitors as well as script-based actions. Please note, disabling the Configure Scripts user right blocks the creation of script-based components when monitoring applications.

Archived Logs.

Log Management has been improved and enhanced to include log data archiving and reporting. The Archived Logs interface presents a detailed inventory of Log Management data moved from the Elasticsearch database to the specified archive location. For additional information, please see WhatsUp Gold Log Management.

New Device Support.

MX-100 Security Appliances and MS-125-24 switches are now supported devices and can be successfully discovered and monitored by WhatsUp Gold.

REST APIs.

Implemented new APIs for:

Refreshing/rescanning a device, set of devices, or device group.
Tracking the status of a refresh/rescan.
Adding a new device to a group.

Updated and Improved

We’re committed to building the best in class software for network and application monitoring. See a problem or an area in need of improvement? Participate in the Community or and post your suggestions in the Ideas Portal. We’re listening.

Feature Area	Item	Description
User Interface	WUG-1687	Improve scrolling functionality in Move to Dialog window.
User Interface	WUG-1811	Loading Dell MIB via SNMP MIB Manager causes APPCRASH for W3WP.
Virtual	WUG-3923	HyperV Guest fails to collect Memory and Disk performance.
Configuration Management	WUG-5327	Configured Tasks fail when over 20 devices are added but succeed when under 20.
Database	WUG-5359	StatisticsInterfaceRaw encountered an exception.
Logs	WUG-5508	Live Error: Unhandled Web API Exception. Value cannot be null. Parameter name: source.
Security	WUG-5827	Need to mitigate http headers – CWE-326.
Reports	WUG-6156	Export issues for configuration management task logs in PDF format (replaced by HTML format).
Security	WUG-6193	Secure Cookie session token may increase risk – CVE-2004-0462.
Active Monitor	WUG-6297	Fan and Temp monitors show as Unknown instead of Down when the monitors are supported but fail to respond to SNMP poll.
Active Monitor	WUG-6382	Add SNMP Support for multiple responses.
Passive Monitor	WUG-6901	Set the WhatsUp Gold Server SNMPV3 engineID to match documented value.
User Interface	WUG-6935	Unhandled Web API Exception. The operation was cancelled.
Alert Center	WUG-7026	Disk utilization threshold is being wrongly resolved.
Alert Center	WUG-7052	Out of Memory Errors in very large Alert Center Environments
Network Traffic Analysis	WUG-7058	This variable binding does not contain a numeric payload when polling source for interface traffic.
Reports	WUG-7065	Timeout Errors Exporting.
Reports	WUG-7136	Schedule report dialog has incorrect notations for To/From in Japanese language.
Map	WUG-7215	LLDP not being detected by WhatsUp Gold resulting in missing link lines.
Discovery	WUG-7233	Discovered Devices Not Adding to Groups For Monitoring.
Map	WUG-7285	Some Meraki Links are missing.
Network Traffic Analysis	WUG-7310	Geo tag for public IPs in NTA are showing inaccurate locations.
Discovery	WUG-7404	Discovered Devices (monitored and unmonitored) are disappearing from Discovered Network.
Application Monitoring	WUG-7512	Exchange APM profiles that have been copied can not be edited and saved.
Map	WUG-7795	Links don’t appear to update and the NetworkViewerDataService is always running.
Advanced Filtering	WUG-7821	Interface Active Monitor Interface Filter – Advanced Filtering – Matching option says ‘Contain’ but is filtering on ‘Exact Match’.
Alert Center	WUG-7829	Database threshold value is not getting saved for Threshold “WhatsUp health”.
Active Monitor	WUG-7878	Temperature Active monitor does not go down when switch is unplugged.
Application Monitoring	WUG-7907	Unable to save SQL query component to an APM SQL(non instance) when using the default instance (blank).
Roles	WUG-8006	Role Error: “Invalid role definitions”.
Device Properties	WUG-881	Configure Network Interfaces grid is empty even if the server returns the default IP address.
Performance Monitor	WUG-912	Arithmetic overflow error converting IDENTITY to data type int. Arithmetic overflow occurred’.

Updated and Improved in v21.1.1

Monitors	WUG-9819	Corrected an issue causing bulk changes to active monitor properties to generate an error message for users with SQL Server compatibility issues.
Upgrade	WUG-9694	Corrected an issue causing potential device deletion from the monitored network following upgrade to v21.1.
Monitors	WUG-9902	Corrected an issue causing active monitor scripts to potentially fail upon initialization.

As is the case with all releases of WhatsUp Gold, we have made several enhancements to improve security in this version of WhatsUp Gold.

Updated and Improved in v21.0.1

Feature Area	Item	Description
WhatsUp Gold Live	WUG-2765	Corrected an error preventing NTA collector from successfully rolling up interface data.
Monitors	WUG-6937	Corrected an error causing Custom WMI Monitors to save the raw path date type.
Log Management	WUG-6953	Corrected an issue causing the following error message: Error initializing winevent info – ‘1’: Missing windows device config data in LogCollectorService.log.
Roles and Subroles	WUG-6967	Corrected an issue preventing a monitor from being successfully applied to a device during scan or rescan after that monitor has been added to a subrole.
Log Management	WUG-6976	Corrected an issue preventing license information specific to Log Management from being displayed when the server time set to GMT.
Maps	WUG-6983	Corrected an issue preventing some map links from displaying the correct status when no monitor is attached.

Updated and Improved in v21.0.1 (2021-Feb-18)

Feature Area	Item	Description
WhatsUp Gold Live	WUG-2765	Corrected an error preventing NTA collector from successfully rolling up interface data.
Monitors	WUG-6937	Corrected an error causing Custom WMI Monitors to save the raw path date type.
Log Management	WUG-6953	Corrected an issue causing the following error message: Error initializing winevent info – ‘1’: Missing windows device config data in LogCollectorService.log.
Roles and Subroles	WUG-6967	Corrected an issue preventing a monitor from being successfully applied to a device during scan or rescan after that monitor has been added to a subrole.
Log Management	WUG-6976	Corrected an issue preventing license information specific to Log Management from being displayed when the server time set to GMT.
Maps	WUG-6983	Corrected an issue preventing some map links from displaying the correct status when no monitor is attached.

Updated and Improved in v21.0.2 (2021-Mar-24)

Feature Area	Item	Description
Tools	WUG-7057	Corrected an error preventing the Layer 2 Trace tool from successfully pinging a destination device.
Device Groups	WUG-7089	Corrected an error preventing a device from being removed from a static device group when they are no longer a member that group.
Log Management	WUG-7159	Corrected an error causing the Log Viewer to report ‘No data to display’ when WinEvent logs are being received from a device using a Japanese language operating system.
Discovery	WUG-7161	Corrected an error preventing WhatsUp Gold from returning all discovered devices when filtering for Recent Scans.
NTA	WUG-7180	Corrected an error causing BWCollector to calculate interface baselines when it should be disabled during flow collection.
Device Groups	WUG-7212	Corrected an error causing a device to be ‘orphaned’ in the database rather than being deleted completely when it has been removed from all static groups.
Device Properties	WUG-7222	Corrected an error preventing Windows Services from being successfully displayed on the Inventory tab when viewing Device Properties.
NTA	WUG-7231	Corrected an error causing Network Traffic Analysis to stop collecting data roughly every 24 hours.
NTA	WUG-7257	Corrected an error causing BWCollector to add new entries in the Aggregation table every time it starts resulting in the collector running out of available IDs.
Devices	WUG-7260	Corrected an error preventing a device from being successfully configured as a dependency root resulting in a null reference.
Devices	WUG-7261	Corrected an error preventing auto dependency generation from functioning.
Log Management	WUG-7269	Corrected an error causing the Log Data Source Setup dialog to incorrectly inform the user their Log Management license has expired.
Upgrade	WUG-7282	Corrected an error causing the ‘networkviewerdataservice.exe’ process to abnormally exit frequently following upgrade to v21.
Device Properties	WUG-7322	Corrected an error causing a discrepancy between BridgePorts data and IfEntry Name/Description on the Inventory tab when viewing Device Properties.

Updated and Improved in v21.0.3 (2021-Aug-3)

Feature Area	Item	Description
File Upload	WUG-8296, WUG-8716, WUG-8360	Corrected a file upload issue.

System Requirements

Operating system and virtual environment requirements

For evaluation purposes, WhatsUp Gold operates on Windows 10. However, production level support requires Windows Server versions only. See below for supported Windows Server platforms.
Installing WhatsUp Gold on a domain controller is not recommended or supported.
If WhatsUp Gold is hosted in virtual environments, to prevent licensing issues, make sure that you assign a static MAC address to the virtual machine on which WhatsUp Gold is operating. Refer to your virtual machine software help documentation for information about assigning a static MAC address for the virtual machine.
WhatsUp Gold requires quad-core processors @ 2.6 GHz (min). If you are installing WhatsUp Gold on a virtual machine, make sure that your guest VM has at least four CPU cores allocated to it. Refer to additional Hardware requirements guidelines.

WhatsUp Gold supports the following Windows Server platforms:

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Standard
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Standard (WhatsUp Gold 2017 Service Pack 2 and later)
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit) with Desktop Experience
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (64-bit) with Desktop Experience

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. The following database versions are supported:

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Express SP2 Edition 32-bit or 64-bit Local
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Standard or Enterprise 32-bit or 64-bit Local/Remote
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard or Enterprise 32-bit or 64-bit Local/Remote
Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2012 or 2014 Enterprise or Datacenter 64-bit Remote only
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Standard or Enterprise
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard or Enterprise
Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Standard or Enterprise

Please note, if you are running SQL Server 2012 on SP3, you need to install additional binaries from Microsoft to prevent potential database issues. This problem occurs because certain 32-bit binaries are missing from SQL Server 2012 SP3. Please refer to the applicable Microsoft support documentation for additional information.

*For evaluation purposes, WhatsUp Gold operates on Windows 10. However, production level support requires Windows Server versions only.

Web server requirements

Web services are required for the web-enabled functionality and reporting provided by WhatsUp Gold:

IIS version 7.x, 8.x, or 10.0.

The WhatsUp Gold installer automatically installs/enables IIS 7.x, 8.x, or 10 on platforms where it is supported. If needed, you can verify which IIS 7.x, 8.x, or 10 OS features are installed/enabled and properly configured from the Windows Control Panel. Verify that the Web Server (IIS) Roles Services listed below have been installed and are enabled.

WhatsUp Gold requires the following Web Server Role Services for IIS 7.x, 8.x, or 10 at a minimum:

Web Server
ASP .NET
Static Content
HTTP Redirection
Default Document

Framework and accessibility requirements

WhatsUp Gold requires the Microsoft .NET Framework and other Microsoft packages for scripting and software accessibility. The following are required software framework and support packages:

.NET 4.7.2, included in installation program.
PowerShell 2.0 (Optionally required for PowerShell scripting. Not included in the WhatsUp Gold installer. Refer to the Microsoft MSDN web site for more information about installing PowerShell).
Microsoft Windows Scripting Host v5.7 (or later).
Microsoft SAPI 5.1 (required for Text-to-Speech actions).

Please note, the Microsoft .NET Framework option is required. However, the following feature/component options cannot be enabled in the Microsoft .NET Framework options:

.NET Framework Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation.
Windows Communication Foundation Non-HTTP Activation.

Web interface requirements

The following web browsers are currently supported for use with WhatsUp Gold 2019:

WhatsUp Gold Web interface:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 11
- Current version of Chrome
- Current version of Firefox

Log Management Requirements

The following table represents the minimum resources required to install and use WhatsUp Gold with Log Management features enabled and connected to either a local or remote Elasticsearch database instance.

Supported virtual environments

WhatsUp Gold supports virtual hosts and virtual machines running on the following virtual environments:

VMware vCenter Server versions 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, and 6.7
VMware ESX versions 3.5, 4.0, and 4.1
VMWare ESXi versions 3.5, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, and 6.7
Hyper-V Server 2012
Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2012 (Hyper-V Role enabled)
Windows Server 2012 R2 (Hyper-V Role enabled)
Hyper-V 2016 (effective for Service Pack 2)

Supported wireless devices

WhatsUp Gold supports the following devices:

16.2 – Cisco Small Business wireless devices (Cisco WAP321)
16.2.9 – Cisco 3650 Series Wireless LAN Controller with lightweight AP
16.2.8 – Cisco 5700 Series Wireless LAN controller
16.2.2 – Cisco WiSM2 (6500 Series) Wireless LAN controller
16.2.2 – Cisco Flex 7500 Series wireless LAN controller
Cisco Aironet wireless LAN controllers and access points
Cisco Airespace wireless LAN controllers and access points
Aruba Mobility wireless LAN controllers and access points
16.2 – Meru Networks wireless devices
16.2 – Ruckus wireless devices
18.0 – Cisco 5520 wireless LAN controllers and access points
18.0 – Cisco 3504 wireless LAN controllers and access points
18.0 – Cisco 2520 wireless LAN controllers and access points
19.0 – Aruba Instant Access Point Wireless Devices (Tested with version 8.6.0.4)

Supported storage devices

WhatsUp Gold supports the following storage devices:

NetApp FAS series
Dell EMC Unity
Dell Compellent

Please see the in-product or online help for special considerations applicable to properly discovering and monitoring storage devices.

Network traffic analysis software requirements

Network traffic analysis requires:

At least one routing device that supports one or more of the following protocols to send flow data to WhatsUp Gold:
- NetFlow versions 1, 5, 7, or 9
  - NetFlow-Lite
  - Flexible NetFlow
  - NetFlow v9 NSEL (NetFlow Secure Event Logging)
- sFlow versions 2 or 5
- J-Flow
- IPFIX

Hardware requirement guidelines

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.

Minimum server recommendations

Poller requirements

Depending on the network environment and product deployment, WhatsUp Gold can poll up to a maximum of 20,000 devices and up to 100,000 monitors with one WhatsUp Gold server and additional pollers (additional pollers required depend on the amount of SNMP and WMI 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. Using additional pollers, 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.

Installing WhatsUp Gold 2021

WhatsUp Gold 2021 supports direct upgrade installations from WhatsUp Gold v16.x, 17.x, 18.x, and 19.x. If you upgrade from a previous version of WhatsUp Gold, make sure to clear the browser cache so the user interface displays the new web application pages after the upgrade. Refer to the Installing WhatsUp Gold guide for details about installation, upgrade, repair, and uninstall. As always, before performing an upgrade be sure to back up your database, if using the SQL Express database included in WhatsUp Gold this can be done by the installer/updater before proceeding with the upgrade.

E-SPIN Group in the business of providing NPMD, NOC, NMS including WhatsUp Gold (WUG) solutions for the enterprise and government customers across the region E-SPIN has been doing business since 2005. E-SPIN is active and provides various turnkey customization, integration with other monitoring systems and helpdesk support system or interfacing with other security operations (SecOps) solutions. Feel free to contact E-SPIN for your project inquiry and requirements.