What's new in IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps 4.9.0

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 4.9.0, IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps delivers improved capabilities and new features for integrating with IBM Db2, runbook conditional branching, alert filtering, topology template building, IBM Tivoli Netcool/Impact policy triggers, and more.

For details on all of the new features and changes introduced with this IBM Cloud Pak version, review the following sections:

Install and upgrade

Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform 4.18 support Support is added for Red Hat OpenShift 4.18 for new or upgraded deployments of IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps. Learn more

Deployment of multiple instances on a single cluster (IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps on Red Hat OpenShift) Support is added for the deployment of multiple instances of IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps in different namespaces on the same Red Hat OpenShift cluster. Install, upgrade, uninstall, and backup and restore (OADP and Fusion) procedures have been updated, and the prereq checker and uninstall scripts are updated to handle multiple instances in a cluster. Learn more

Scaling up storage (IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps on Red Hat OpenShift) The procedures for resizing datastores for deployments of IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps on Red Hat OpenShift are updated, and procedures are added for more datastores. Learn more

Benchmarking storage A new benchmarking tool is provided to help evaluate whether your storage is performant enough for a production deployment of IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps. Storage performance requirements are updated. Learn more (OpenShift) or Learn more (Linux)

New prerequisite checking (IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps on Linux®) The aiopsctl tool will now check whether a cluster is correctly setup before installing IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps. Learn more

New Prometheus rule to generate alerts for storage issues A new rule is provided to help you proactively monitor your IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps deployment for developing storage problems. Learn more

Upgrade procedure updated Steps are added to update your existing IBM® Db2® schema if you have a IBM Db2 integration configured. Learn more

Multi-zone high availability and disaster recovery (HADR) (IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps on Red Hat OpenShift) This remains as a technology preview. In 4.9.0, the hardware requirements are updated to account for the extra resources that are required for multizone deployments. Learn more

Defining integrations

IBM Db2 integration for data export: You can integrate with IBM Db2 to store alert and incident data in the Db2 database. With this integration, you can export data to a Db2 database. To use this feature, you can create a policy with a Db2 integration that, when triggered, forwards events to your Db2 instance for use outside of IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps. This data can be used for historical event archiving, creating a database for later use with auditing, and reporting, or for making the data accessible to IBM Cognos® Analytics to create custom dashboards or reports on Cloud Pak for AIOps event data. Your users can configure the policy conditions to handle all incoming events or a scoped subset. The connector is scalable to keep up with Cloud Pak for AIOps event ingestion and status change rate. Learn more.

Managing applications (services) and viewing topologies

  • When generating groups of devices from tag or token templates, host-to-host hop views can now be set as default. This setting removes superfluous information from a rendered topology by displaying only hosts and their connections. Learn more.

  • The steps to enable and disable observer-based integrations are updated. Learn more.

  • A new prerequisite is required when configuring Kubernetes observer jobs. This step is for creating the Kubernetes service account token for Kubernetes on OpenShift Version 4.16 (and later versions). Learn more.

Automating processes (Policies, Runbooks, Actions)

  • Runbooks: Conditional branching for action steps in runbooks now supports custom conditions. Learn more.

  • Policies:

    • When an IBM Db2 integration is set up and running, you can create a policy to send alerts or incidents from Cloud Pak for AIOps to populate an external IBM Db2 database for historical archiving, auditing, reporting, and other uses. Learn more.

    • A Use default trigger condition option is available for the trigger entity when invoking an IBM Tivoli Netcool/Impact policy. The default trigger condition is a pre-defined template that excludes clear, closed, or suppressed alerts from the policy. Learn more.

Resolving incidents and alerts

Basic and Advanced filtering tabs for alerts and incidents: On the filter side panels for alerts and incidents, there are now Basic and Advanced tabs. The Advanced tab allows you to create custom filter conditions. The filter language is based on a version of the PostgreSQL WHERE clause. For more information, see Searching and filtering incidents and Searching and filtering alerts.

Apply filters to the incident list based on alert details within incidents: You can apply filters on the incident page based on the columns that are present in the alerts which are associated with the incident. Learn more.

New and improved user preferences menu for alert viewer and incident list: For more information, see Setting user preferences for the Alert Viewer and Setting user preferences for the Incidents list.

Infrastructure Automation

  • Support for RPM package scanning: RPM package scanning during SmartState analysis is now supported within IBM Infrastructure Management on Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 8 and 9. Learn more.

Non-production (technology preview)

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

    • 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 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, 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:

  • Visualizing analytics with IBM Cognos Analytics documentation: The documentation for installing and using IBM Cognos Analytics (Available only for technology preview) is updated to provide additional guidance on installing and integrating with IBM Cognos Analytics with IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps, and for getting started with the integration.

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: