What's new in IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps 4.8.1

Get a quick overview of what is new with IBM Cloud Pak® for AIOps.

IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps leverages AI to streamline IT operations, increase uptime, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. The solution supports Operations teams to deliver optimum performance and assurance by:

  • Breaking down data silos
  • Providing real-time insights into IT systems
  • Augmenting incident management with AI
  • Automating incident resolution

With Version 4.8.1, IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps delivers improved capabilities and new features for runbook export/import, integrations, Infrastructure Automation, and more.

Overall, the following new features and changes are introduced with this IBM Cloud Pak version:

Install and upgrade

  • Hosted control planes on Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform support IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps can now be installed on a Red Hat OpenShift cluster that uses hosted control planes. Learn more

  • Hardware requirements for integrations on Linux: Integrations run as pods and have minimum and maximum resource allocations in terms of CPU, memory, and storage. For more information, see Integrations requirements.

Defining integrations (connections)

  • Updates to ServiceNow admin user role: ServiceNow admin user requirements are updated. For more information, see User roles.

  • Addition of ServiceNow App privacy policy: ServiceNow App privacy policy page is now available. For more information, see ServiceNow App privacy policy.

Automating processes (Policies, Runbooks, Actions)

  • Runbooks:

    • Runbook export/import now provides encryption of sensitive data. For more information, see Export and import runbooks.

    • You can connect to Ansible Automation Platform 2.5. For more information, see Ansible actions.

  • Policies:

    • Use the Policies UI to export your Cloud Pak for AIOps policies and import them into a different deployment. For more information, see Exporting and importing policies.

Resolving incidents and alerts

  • There is a new user preference in the Alert Viewer to Enable the checkbox column for the alert list. This preference can be set in both the stand-alone alert list and the Incident alert list.

    Note: By default, this preference is turned off. After upgrading to Cloud Pak for AIOps 4.8.1, the checkbox column in the alert list will not be shown unless enabled. For more information, see Setting user preferences for the Alert Viewer.

Infrastructure Automation

  • MongoDB version update: The supported version for external MongoDB that can be used within Managed services is updated. For more information, see External MongoDB connection.

  • Updates to support matrix: Supported platforms and features within Infrastructure Management are updated. For more information, see Support matrix.

  • Update environment variables: Update environment variables for Managed services to resolve an issue in your environment. For more information, see Updating environment variables for Managed services.

  • Updates to Service Dialog: When you create a Terraform Service Catalog item, the Terraform Template variables section contains input fields for each of the input variables from the Terraform Template. For more information, see Provisioning steps to create a Service Dialog Create a Terraform Service Catalog item.

Non-production (technology preview)

  • Visualizing analytics with IBM Cognos Analytics: The supported capabilities when integrating with IBM Cognos Analytics are improved:

    • You can integrate with IBM Db2 to store alert and incident data in the Db2 database. With this integration, you can create policies to send the alert or incident data from IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps to populate a dashboard or report in IBM Cognos® Analytics.

      For more information about creating this integration, see Creating an IBM Db2 integration. For more information about using policies to send data for a dashboard or report, see Populating a dashboard or report.

    • A new Incident list widget and Button widget are available for use in building a custom dashboard. For more information about the available widgets that you can use, see IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps widgets within IBM Cognos Analytics.

    • Example dashboards are now available to help you learn about the capabilities of the available widgets and to help you create your own dashboard. For more information about creating a dashboard, see Creating a dashboard.

    Overall, this integration provides you with additional tools to create custom dashboards and reports to visualize and analyze your IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data. When you set up this integration, you can open IBM Cognos Analytics from the Cloud Pak for AIOps console and begin using IBM Cognos Analytics dashboards to build visualizations of your IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data, such as alert and topology data.

  • Additional feature previews: In addition to the integration with IBM Cognos Analytics, IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps includes the following components and features for non-production use as a technology preview:

    • Incident (Story) prioritization from persistence analysis and golden signals extraction
    • Multi-zone high availability and disaster recovery (HADR)
    • New data collection functionality for Dynatrace integration

For more information about these feature previews, see Non-production features (Technology preview).

Security and compliance

  • Fixed security vulnerabilities: Fixes and updates are included to address reported security-related vulnerabilities with IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps. For more information about the included fixes, see Security bulletins and fixes.

  • Updates to retention period for Log resources: The retention period for Log resources is now updated. If needed, the retention period can be customized for Logs resources. For more information, see Default data retention periods.

Documentation changes

In addition to the documentation for the preceding new and changed features, the following documentation is updated:

  • Enrich incidents by using IBM Tivoli Netcool/Impact policy: If needed, you can enrich Cloud Pak for AIOps incidents with data from external systems. For more information, see Enriching an incident.

  • Alert anomaly detection: If an alert storm is detected, an alert is raised and displayed as a metric anomaly in the Alert Viewer. For more information, see Alert anomaly detection.

  • ChatOps integrations: If you update from the default cpd route, you need to pass the new URL into your integration deployments as environment variables. ChatOps integrations do not work until the new URL is passed into the deployments. For more information, see (Optional) Refresh ChatOps pods.

  • Netcool event load splitting calculations: The section Calculating the number of integrations that are required for given load of domain alerts is now updated with steps and the correct formula. For more information, see Netcool event load splitting calculation.

  • Cloud Pak for AIOps health dashboard: Health dashboard for Cloud Pak for AIOps is now available and can be imported to Grafana. For more information, see Cloud Pak for AIOps health dashboard.

  • Managed services: Table of contents for Managed services is improved. The following sections are added to table of contents for Managed services.

Previously introduced features and changes

For more information about new features and changes that were introduced in previous versions of IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps, see: