Happy New Year and welcome to Nastel's monthly support newsletter!
2020 was a challenging year for everyone. We are looking forward to 2021 being a much better year. Despite everything going on and dealing with the pandemic professionally and personally, the Nastel R&D teams continued to innovate and have released several product upgrades for AutoPilot, Navigator, and XRay plus some new products. We had quite a few new "logos" join you as Nastel customers which showed the value that we offer, even when companies are facing uncertain times. We’ve also been speaking with more of your service development, DevOps and risk management colleagues to help solve additional business and technical problems, so please introduce more of those folks to us this year.
Cloud technologies played a big part in what you are doing so we have expanded into those areas with certifications for the RedHat Marketplace and AWS. We even had some time along the way to try out new things, like the US Election Social media analysis, which applied machine learning and analytics to the various discussion groups. When we realized that Java micro-benchmarking was an issue we wanted to address and found that the tools in the market were not meeting the need, we created our own tool, CyBench, and just made this available for free for your development/DevOp teams.
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Table of Contents
1. Updates
2. Popular FAQs
3. XRay COVID-19 Data Lake
4. Webinars & TechTalks
5. Keeping up with Nastel
6. Nastel's blog
1. Updates
Hopefully you had a chance to attend the first of the Nastel Customer Webinars for 2021. If you did then you know most of the information in this month's newsletter already, if not then watch our webinar replay or view our slide deck (which includes the poll results) for the “Nastel Technologies Overview of Product Updates 2021” webinar! You can also forward this newsletter to colleagues at your company who can benefit from the webinar content.
Navigator 10.1
We released Navigator 10.1 during December. This release is the latest update to Nastel Navigator and includes several exciting new features.
- WGS connection definitions. We moved the task of configuring the WGS connections from a user task to an administrator task. The end users now just get a list of Workgroup Servers to pick from a list and the actual configuration and ports are hidden from them. There are some specific steps when upgrading and you will want to review the FAQ on that below.
- User groups as Project Filters. For application support teams that support multiple different projects, they can now apply that project as a filter at the Viewlet or dashboard level. That is, if Chris is responsible for payroll and credits and you want to restrict his view to just payroll, you can now do that very quickly in Navigator 10.1.
- Custom properties. This feature allows you to add your own attributes to objects. There are many use cases; you could tag it with an application identifier, a contact name, or even a color. These attributes can be shown in Viewlets, used as filters and even are published as facts for use with AutoPilot policies.
- URL-based Viewlet. These Viewlets can be used for adding XRay data right into the Navigator GUI. So using this one interface, users could see their live MQ data, policy information, tracking and any other XRay data. They can also imbed other URLs so you can integrate run book information or even a how-to video.
- View export to CSV. You can download the data being viewed and share them with others or use to produce reports over time.
- Extended Admin Settings. The administrator can now set most default values for users. They can also control which Cipher Specs are allowed and other configurations.
- REST API Extensions. Added REST services for Scheduler, Kafka and Web Security Manager.
As with all of the latest software, this release is available from the Nastel download center. If you do not have the latest credentials, contact support or your technical account manager.
Note that the packaging has been changed in this release, see the December Newsletter for details, or see the resource center FAQ section for both packaging and upgrade information.
XRay Mobile Applications
The latest release of the mobile applications for iOS and Android are available in their respective stores here and here. This release provides enhanced viewing of the XRay data. It’s a free add-on to Nastel XRay. If not currently a customer, please contact your account manager for additional details.
Navigator X
I am sure you have heard about Navigator X and wonder how it affects you. Some see it as a software bundle, which it is to a degree, but it goes beyond that. As you review the features we are adding to AutoPilot, Navigator and XRay, you will notice that they are increasing the value of the combined products. The example I use is that if each of the components had a value of 10, the combined solution isn’t a value of 30, it’s a value of 50. And we are going to continue to increase the value of both the components and the combination. To see all the benefits of Navigator X, existing customers can ask their account manager to set up a demo or they can check out the Navigator X page and decide if you want to add the additional functionality.
2. Popular FAQs
Why do I have Workgroup server definitions that begin with GEN_ ?
The connection definitions with GEN_ are created during upgrade processing. These should be renamed to a meaningful name. Since connection definitions were new with 10.1.5, the names for them were generated from the existing attributes. The WGS name itself could not be used because multiple users might have the same WGS defined in different ways. So the upgrade generated a name GEN_ followed by the IP, host and port. In many cases, all you will need to do is rename the definitions. To do this, go to the workspace and click on the Manage Workgroup Servers icon.
For complete instructions, see this FAQ.
What changes are in packaging for Navigator 10.1 ?
With the 10.1 release (available end of December 2020), we are shipping the following:
- Primary bundle, which contains all of the code that is platform independent including the Work group server, web apps, EMS and Kafka connection manager and the AutoPilot Experts
- Components bundle which has platform specific items, including MQ agents and Connection Manager, utilities and the windows console
The goal is to make applying software updates easier. If you want to update the WGS and Navigator GUI only, you only need the primary bundle. If you want to update a platform specific component, you use the components bundle.
Additional details can be found here.
How do I setup Nastel XRay in iOS and Android?
The installation, setup and usage are similar in both iOS and Android with minor variations due to the underlying architecture.
To see step by step instructions click here.
Nastel Navigator and Red Hat Quick Start Guide
Use this guide to get started with Nastel Navigator and Red Hat OpenShift.
3. XRay COVID-19 Data Lake
Nastel has pulled together multiple COVID-19 datasets from CDC, Johns Hopkins University and several others into a single interactive data lake on which you can:
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Run your own queries & computations
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Create analytics & web dashboards
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Share your charts & graphs in web apps
The data lake is updated daily with the latest COVID-19 stats from around the world. View the dashboard live (no registration required)!
COVID-19 Data Lake Registration
4. Webinars & TechTalks
Hopefully you had a chance to attend the first of the Nastel Customer Webinars for 2021. If you did then you know most of the information in this month's newsletter already, if not then watch our webinar replay or view our slide deck for Nastel Technologies Overview of Product Updates 2021!
Session Highlights:
- What’s new in Nastel AutoPilot, Nastel Navigator and Nastel XRay
- Introducing Navigator X
- Other New Developments (including a new DevOps benchmarking tool to try for free)
- Q&A
Click HERE to see our library of other on-demand sessions.
5. Keeping up with Nastel
Click HERE to read Nastel news.
6. Nastels' blog
Click HERE to read Nastel's blog.