Beta Release
The Agent and Server software should not be used in production. This version does
not have the benefit of extensive field testing that a typical release has.
Additionally, The log files and packages created by this beta are not compatible with older Hubs
or Analysts.
Upgrade Can't be Rolled Back
Once you have run the Analyst in this release it will upgrade your repository to
a new standard that can't be converted back to the Gibraltar 2.x format. Contact
Gibraltar Support if you need to roll back for a discussion of options that can
preserve your log data.
Automatic Enrollment in the CEIP
By using any beta version of Gibraltar you will be automatically enrolled in our
customer experience improvement program (CEIP) for as long as you're using the beta.
This is essential so we can get information about how the beta is performing and
improve the final release.
If you have any feedback - things that are great and things that aren't up to
snuff - please let us know by email to
support@gibraltarsoftware.com.
We appreciate your time trying out this beta release.
Prerequisites
Before installing Gibraltar, you need to have .NET 4.0 or later installed.
If .NET 4.0 is not installed you will be prompted to before setup can continue.
If you want to use the Gibraltar Hub Server in this release you must have a SQL
Server for it to work with. This can be Microsoft SQL Express 2008 or newer up through
any other edition. The SQL Server can be installed on the same server or another
server.
Compatibility Notes
- New File Format: The log files and packages created by this beta are not compatible with older Hubs
or Analysts.
- Breaking API Changes: This is a beta release that has minor API changes from the last official release.
Additionally, its API is still in the process of being defined so further changes
can be expected to break compatibility between this version and the final release
of 3.0.
- Agent: Due to file format changes, if you use the Agent in this
release then you must upgrade the Hub and Analyst as well.
- Hub: Fully backwards compatible with older Agents and Analysts.
- Analyst: Fully backwards compatible with older Hubs and Agents.
Side by Side Compatibility
You can mix older and newer agents on the same computer, however they will be unaware
of each other and will not coordinate when sending to hub, packaging, or auto send
consent. When upgrading any unsent sessions recorded by a 2.x agent will not be
transfered by the newer agent.
New Features In This Release
Network Live View
You can now view log data in real time over a network connection between Agent &
Analyst. This requires all three components be up to date: Agent, Hub, and Analyst.
Since it requires an updated Hub to work this isn't available with the Gibraltar
Hub Service at this time.
Categorize Sessions by Environment and Promotion Level
You can now pass an environment name (e.g. your hosting company, a facility name,
or some other scheme you use for naming your internal computing environments) or
a promotion level (e.g. internal, certification, production) if either of those
fit for you. Both fields can be used at the same time, or you can leave them blank
if they don't apply to your situation.
Session File Compression
The compression approach used for session files has been dramatically improved with
the average file approximately one third the size of the same data in a Gibraltar
2.0 data file.
Agent Scalability
A number of updates have been done to improve the scalability of Agent with larger
and longer sessions. This includes:
- Reduced memory during recording: The memory used while recording
session data into large files has been significantly reduced.
- Reduced memory during packaging: The way session data files are
transfered from agents through to the Analyst has been changed to prevent merging
file fragments in the Agent and defering it to when it is loaded. This dramatically
reduces the memory and processor impact of packaging.
- Efficient hub network transfer for long-running sessions: Individual
file fragments aren't resent to the hub when there are updates. Long running
processes (like windows services) can keep sending updates efficiently and if you
elect to send data to the server every tme there is an error the amount of data
sent is only the unsent information.
Analyst Scalability
A number of updates have been done to improve the ability to use Analyst with larger
sessions and more sessions. This includes:
- 64-Bit support: If you're running a 64-bit operating system
Analyst will now run in 64-bit to let you take advantage of all the RAM you can
muster.
- Analysis safety limit: Analyst won't attempt to perform background
analysis on sessions that might require more memory than is available.
- Refresh suppression: As your repository gets more sessions in it,
refreshing data gets more time consuming. Analyst detects this and suppresse most
automatic refresh of repository data when the expected duration is too high.
Hub Synchronization Options
You can now configure if you want Analyst to automatically download all session
data (previously the only option), just download session summaries or not download
anything until prompted. When set to just download session summaries the session
detail will be automatically retrieved if you open a session to view it. This can
tremendously reduce the disk space and time required to get in sync with the hub.
This configuration option is under the new Server menu.
Error summary limitation
The current release has a known limitation where session analysis information (like
errors by class or category) is not available in Analyst without downloading the
full session detail.
Metric Graphing
Session metric graphing has been rewritten to offer similar capabilities to metric
charting. You can now:
- Customize metric grouping and display: You can change the default
grouping of metrics by unit to your own grouping. Additional graph types such as
area, stacked area, and full stacked area are supported to facilitate viewing how
sets of metrics contribute together to a total in absolte and percentage terms.
- Edit graphed metrics: Once you've added a metric to the graph
you can edit its configuration.
- Easy export to PNG: In addition to a full featured printing feature
for graphs you can do a one-button export to PNG to quickly get an image of a graph.
Support for MONO
The Agent in this release has been verified to work under some versions of MONO
(2.4.2 and later) on Linux. It may work for other versions of MONO and on other
operating systems. The final release of 3.0 is expected to work with MONO 2.4.2
and later under Linux and MacOS.
Defects Fixed In This Release
This is the list of issues fixed since the last release version (2.5.2.815)
Agent
- Fixed: The Agent keeps a copy of the original exception well after it's queued
for logging.
- Fixed: Packager utility will not crash when presented with bad input, it writes
a message to the console instead.
- Fixed: Gibraltar Agent for PostSharp doesn't set a default event metric value.
- Fixed: Gibraltar Agent for PostSharp is not thread safe when calculating timing
for methods that may be invoked concurrently.
- Fixed: Gibraltar Agent for PostSharp GFeature treats EnableSourceLookup exactly
backwards when set.
Analyst
- Fixed: AddIns can't access metric samples because they don't implement the
correct interfaces.
Hub
- Fixed: Updated session data isn't available if the session was already read
by an Analyst due to a problem with the file cache.
- Fixed: If a request times out while waiting on an internal lock it may cause all
subsequent requests to timeout.
Installing Hub Server
Before Installing
- There is no upgrade from previous versions of the hub to this version. If you install
on the same computer as an existing hub the older software must be uninstalled first,
and the data and subscriptions will not be carried forward. The final release will
include an upgrade.
- You will need to have a SQL Server installation for the Hub.
This can be any edition of SQL Server and version 2008 or higher. You will need
to pre-create a database and have credentials handy so the Hub can run as DBO to
the database.
Initial Configuration
Once you've completed the installation you need to configure the Hub to have
a location on disk for its repository and a connection to the database server.
If you have installed on the same computer that had an existing Hub server it will
keep the existing repository configuration. To bring the server on line you
will need to enter a connection string to the SQL Server database on the Storage
tab. Be sure to test the SQL connection before you save the configuration.
You may find that the Hub Server Administration tool will not start when upgrading
an existing server because it can't open the repository. In this case,
you will need to remove the existing configuration entry so that the tool will perform
its first-time startup checks. This can be done by deleting the file
C:\ProgramData\Gibraltar\Configuration\Server.config.
Once you have specified the connection string you can start the Gibraltar Team Service.
If you are using Windows credentials to authenticate to the SQL Server be sure that
it can be accessed by the web site and the Gibraltar Team Service. You can
check that the web service is running correctly by accessing its local logging page
at http://localhost/admin/logviewer.aspx.