With the general availability and launch of Stratusphere UX 6.6.0, Liquidware announces the following enhancements and developments in this latest version:
Version 6.6.0-1 released March 14th, 2022.
What’s New?
• ORACLE LINUX 8: Stratusphere 6.6.0 appliances now use the Oracle Linux 8 Operating System. This
operating system replaces the CentOS 8 which is now EOL. Red Hat CentOS 8 had support until
2028 but Red Hat decided to sunset CentOS 8 by the end of 2021 and switch it to CentOS
Stream. Thus, Liquidware Stratusphere appliances now run Oracle Linux 8 which is based on Red
Hat CentOS distribution. Oracle Linux 8 was chosen because it has wide acceptance across
various hypervisor and cloud platforms as well has universal acceptance within the US Federal
Government agencies due to its Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs). Liquidware
supports in-place upgrade only from 6.5.1-2 to 6.6.0. All earlier versions require migrating the
appliances from the old version to the new appliance. See the Upgrading section below on how
to install it or migrate to it depending on your current version installed.
• MACHINE LOCATION: Liquidware added a machine location feature to the CID Key. It is supported
on all versions of Windows and Linux. Mac OS will be supported soon as well. The CID Key uses
Machine Location services on the machine it is installed on to get the latitude and longitude
coordinates of the machine. These are then converted in City, State/Province, Country, and
Continent within the Stratusphere Database. This feature must be enabled by the end user, and
on doing so, a location database is installed on the Stratusphere Database appliance that
requires about 5 GB of space. This data is now available under the ADVANCED > INSPECTORS >
MACHINES & USERS tab’s SUMMARY | LOCATION | COUNTRY, STATE, CITY Inspector View.
• MACHINE LOCAL ACCOUNTS: Liquidware added a feature to collect information on local accounts on
machines. It collects the name of the accounts, whether they have administrator privileges, their
statuses regarding locked/unlocked/active/etc. and the last time the account was logged into.
This information is available under the ADVANCED > INSPECTORS > INVENTORY tab’s MACHINES | LOCAL
USER ACCOUNTS Inspector Views.
• MICROSOFT WINDOWS 11 UPGRADE COMPATIBILITY: Liquidware added a new feature that collects
information related to Microsoft Windows 11 Compatibility check that determines whether that
machine meets all the criteria to be considered fully supported for Windows 11. This
information is available under ADVANCED > INSPECTORS > INVENTORY tab’s MACHINES | WINDOWS
COMPATIBILITY Inspector View.
• METRIC: USER INPUT DELAY: Liquidware added a new metric the collects the User Input Delay for
each process as well as on the machine level to detect lag on a machine. User Input Delay is
defined as the delay between when an input (keyboard or mouse) was entered into the
operating system queue and when it was provided to the application – the longer the delay, the
worse the user experience. This metric is available under ADVANCED > INSPECTORS > APPLICATIONS
and PROCESS NAMES tabs in the APPLICATION | INPUT DELAY Inspector View.
• CID KEY SUPPORTS MACOS MONTEREY AND WINDOWS 11 & WINDOWS SERVER 2022: Liquidware
updated the CID Key to support Mac OS Monterey, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2022.
Enhancements
• ADVANCED > DASHBOARDS:
o Sankey Diagrams: Enhanced data visualization by adding a new animated Sankey
Diagram widget which displays multi-level data in a beautiful looking widget. Examples
of multi-level data include Machines > Users > Processes > Destination IPs or Application
Name > Process Name > Version > Destination IP.
Access to Dashboards: Liquidware enhanced security by adding a check on whether a
user is part of any group that has access to dashboard(s) before displaying the
dashboard(s) to a user. If the user is not part of any user group that has been given
access to the dashboard by the creator of the dashboard, then the user will not be able
to view that dashboard. The user must be part of the user group that is assigned to the
dashboard. For the default dashboards too, the user must belong a user group that is
assigned to the dashboard such as “dash_admin” or “dash_user” to get access to
the default dashboards.
• ADVANCED > SPOTCHECKS:
o Basis Search: Liquidware enhanced useability by adding an option to search the primary
Basis available within a SpotCheck. This enhancement allows end users to search for
data based on a particular user, or machine or application/process if they are part of the
SpotCheck.
o Easy Answers: Liquidware enhanced useability of SpotChecks by providing answers or
guidance on what to do if a metric is not within acceptable thresholds, along with a brief
explanation.
• Advanced > Inspectors:
o Liquidware updated the default row limit to 25 rows, down from 100 rows as the
original default, to provide faster performance.
o Liquidware enhanced the Go button to pull fresh data and not use any cached data by
detecting a long press on the Go button. When pressed for a longer duration, the Go
button sets aside cached data and pulls in up-to-the-minute data from the database.
This database pull does NOT update the cache.
o Liquidware enhanced deeper visibility by adding the MAC address of a Network
Interface Card (NIC) as a Basis within the ADVANCED > INSPECTORS > USER ID and MACHINES
tabs.
• Web UI:
o UX PROFILE: Liquidware now uses Summarized, roll-up table for UX Profile recalculations.
It was using Detail data for this that could take a long time for calculations. So, to speed
it up, it now uses the Summarized, roll-up tables to quickly calculate averages and
standard deviations for each individual metric within UX Profile, that can then be used
to update the UX Profile for better rating of the end user experience.
o VM DIRECTORIES: Liquidware added an EXCLUDE VMS field to exclude some type of virtual
machines that meet a case insensitive naming pattern such as “cp-parent*”. This
exclusion list takes precedence over any inclusion list based on naming pattern.
Please see product release notes for additional information:
https://docs.liquidware.com/stratusphere/en-us/stratusphere.htm