Announcing Checkmk 2.0 and its Innovation Release

Announcements
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This has also been sent as part of the September Checkmk Newsletter. If you would like to subscribe to to monthly Checkmk updates via e-mail, please sign up here.

Dear Checkmk community,

For many months our development team has been pushing to deliver the next full version of our IT monitoring solution. In doing so, we have reworked many of Checkmk’s foundations. In fact, we have upgraded Checkmk so much, that we have decided to make the version step change to 2.0.

Here are some highlights of what’s new in Checkmk 2.0:

  • Easier usability with a new user experience incl. a new navigation, design overhaul, improved dashboards and data visualization

  • Higher performance with a new architecture of the Checkmk Micro Core (CMC) that increases its throughput while reducing its memory and CPU footprint

  • Improved automation capabilities with a REST-API that covers large parts of our current Web-API as well as operations data (‘Livestatus’)

  • Simpler development and maintenance of check plugins with the new Check-API

  • In-depth visibility into networks with Network Flow Monitoring through an in-depth ntop integration

  • Higher configuration flexibility with expanded use of labels , which are discovered for more systems and can be used to filter views and set notification conditions

  • More insights with advanced forecasting for metrics

  • Improved performance through incremental configuration sync in distributed environments

  • Improved Grafana integration (now also available in the Checkmk Raw Edition)

  • Modern graphs for the Checkmk Raw Edition

  • Entire codebase rewrite, now in Python 3.8

  • And much more…

Since these changes are very significant, we want to make sure we have enough time for testing— both for usability as well as for quality. As such, we have decided to push back the release to the beginning of next year.

It’s important for us that you, as part of our user community, are involved in this process. Your early feedback is crucial to the success of Checkmk 2.0, that’s why we are doing an ‘Innovation Release’ at the end of October. It will not contain all of the aforementioned changes yet. We will share details of the content in the innovation release announcement.

This milestone is something big for us, and we want to talk to you more about it. We invite you to join us in an online Community Call approximately a week after the Innovation version’s release. This is the perfect opportunity to learn more about the release and ask your questions live! We will announce when and where it will happen here on the forum, as well as on our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. If you’re subscribed to the newsletter, we will also send out a special newsletter for that topic.

For any feedback and thoughts you wanted to share regarding this announcement, feel free to leave a reply on this thread as usual. :wink:

Best regards,
Faye

10 Likes
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Nice! This is what has previously been called 1.7, right? Or will there still be a 1.7 in between 1.6 and 2.0?

1 Like
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Hey @martin.schwarz, that’s right. This was previously called 1.7. :wink:

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4

Any screenshots or demo?

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Hi @planet4,

This presentation at the last conference can give some impression. On the Innovation Release, we expect to be able to share the new UI so you can play with it and give your feedback :slight_smile:

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Will it be safe to install the innovation release on my production cmk server along side my production version?

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As a new site yes - i have already a 1.7 aka 2.0 version running for first tests and it is on my production system as a test instance.

8

Hi,
does anyone happen to know if in version 2.0 the labels are transferred to the notification environment? This is currently not the case and unfortunately I can’t see any werks regarding this so far.
Thanks!

Christian

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In my test site i see no conditions for the labels inside the notification system.

EDIT : a test inside the notification system shows no labels in the complete notification context.
If there is nothing in the context then there are also no NOTIFY_ variables

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Hi @andreas-doehler ,
I do not mean labels as conditions. I mean labels in the Notification Environment.
The Variables which are transferred to any notification script.
All NOTIFY_ Variables.

I would like the host and service labels as NOTIFY_ variables. So I can use them in my event management system.

1 Like
11

Will the update be available for all versions (including virtual appliance)?

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Hi @flori-it!
2.0 will be available for all versions. The Innovation Release however, will not be available for the Raw Edition.

13

If you use conditions, you need the Labels in the notification context. So this werk should help you:

2 Likes
14

Hi,
Does version 2.0 also include this feature?
we were waiting for 1.7 release now it seems next release will 2.0. so just wanted to confirm we also get this feature in 2.0.

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Hi,
yes this feature is included.

Karl

1 Like
16

I noticed a typo in the following menu (2.0.0b3 CRE):

  • Setup
  • Services
  • Service Discovery Rules

Click ‘Related’

Then there is a item ‘Used rulsets’ , which most probably should read ‘Used rulesets’.

Please have a look, and correct if agreed.

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Hi, do you plan to support xmatters? Thanks!

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Most of the incident management systems like xmatters can be integrated with writing a notification plugin for checkmk that calls an API-URL of the system.

2 Likes