Introduction to GroundWork Monitor EE 8.2.1

The GroundWork Team is proud to announce a new update to GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Edition (EE), version 8. This is 8.2.1, and will be the last version for the year. We are adding features that you, our loyal customers, asked for, and one or two that we thought you would like in the future. Also, we are rolling all the patch levels we released for 8.2.0 up into this release as well. As always, you can see the changes from the last version listed in the Release Notes for GroundWork Monitor. If you are new to GroundWork, this article will tell you what you need to know about the product, why we made it, and how to use it.

What's new in this version?

In addition to fixing up the user interface to be faster and more accurate and informative, we have added two more items to the suite of TCG connectors. The GroundWork Office connector allows subscribers to Microsoft Azure™, Microsoft 365™, and Microsoft SharePoint™ services to monitor availability, license consumption, and storage and email usage. The Kubernetes connector interfaces to the Kubernetes Metrics API to pull in usage statistics from pods, nodes and namespaces in Kubernetes. 

These new sources for monitoring data round out a maturing set of connectors including Elastic, APM, SNMP, and of course the Nagios connector used in data transport for all GroundWork servers. Each of these connectors have been getting attention too, and are more functional for more things than ever. 

We are also simplifying our license counting and database structure in this release. Be sure to read the release notes, as if you are a user of the product already, your license may need adjustment to accommodate this new way of counting. We still license by host, but we no longer allow the many-hostname-to-one-address configuration that is possible in prior versions. 

What do I need to know to be able to use GroundWork Monitor 8.2.1?

We are providing a Quick Start document for those of you new to monitoring with GroundWork Monitor 8.2.1. There’s a lot of community knowledge that you can use when setting up GroundWork Monitor, especially if you ever used a prior version. There are also some Docker Commands administrators will want to get familiar with in order to make the most of their GroundWork Monitor 8.2.1 installations, especially if you are new to working with containers.

Of course, if you need more than you can absorb from the documentation on your own, we offer training and support. Just ask us about our training courses. 

Do I need to get a Docker License? 

No. Well, maybe. As of August 2021, Docker changed its free licensing model for Docker Desktop. The open source license for Docker Engine remains unchanged, however. How you use Docker and run containers is up to you, but GroundWork only requires Docker Engine, and so you don't need a license per se. Of course, you may have Docker Enterprise, or want to run GroundWork under Docker Desktop (not recommended, but technically possible). In that case, you should make sure you use Docker software in accordance with the license they provide. 

What to do, and What not to do

Please see Best Practices. In principle, monitoring is an essential service for any IT department. We can't know what your needs are (unless you tell us), but we have seen a lot of deployments and are happy to share our knowledge. 

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