New Skyline Release: SupportAssist Integration, Log Assist for Horizon and More

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We’re excited to announce a new VMware Skyline release that includes several new features designed to provide even more value to you and your organization. Be sure to update your Skyline Collectors to the latest version (2.3) to take advantage of the new features and functionality. If you have the “Auto Update” feature enabled, your Collectors will update approximately within the next seven days.

New features in this release include:

Enhanced Security Policies: As of November 19^th, Skyline has enhanced security policies and now Skyline Advisor explicit grant access is required. Your Skyline Admin must grant users access permissions to ensure no interruption to their service. To do this, Admins (organization owners) must log into their VMware Cloud Services Platform (CSP) organizations and use the identity and access management feature to assign access permissions to each user they wish to use to Skyline. This will enable users to access the Skyline Findings and Recommendations as well as other features including Log Assist for automatic support log bundle upload. Please refer to the Skyline Advisor Security Enhancement KB article for additional information.

If you need assistance, you can visit the Skyline documentation center or the Skyline Community, which is monitored by expert Skyline engineers.

VMware Skyline Integration with Dell EMC SupportAssist: Thousands of VMware customers leverage Dell EMC SupportAssist to proactively support Dell hardware. SupportAssist Enterprise (SAE) is Dell’s proactive support technology for hardware that is included with their support plans. Skyline and SAE have joined forces, enabling a best-in-class proactive support experience for customers running Dell and VMware. Skyline now integrates with SAE to help customers proactively optimize joint solutions. VMware and Dell PowerEdge 12G+ server customers will see an alert in SAE that provides information about Skyline, with a call to action to download and install Skyline. Similarly, Skyline users will see an alert in Skyline Advisor that provides information about SAE, with a call to action to download and install SAE. This announcement is the first step toward tighter integration between Skyline and SAE. In addition to Skyline Collector 2.3, Dell EMC SupportAssist Enterprise v.4.0.5 is required. Visit the Dell Technologies SupportAssist https://www.dell.com/support/driver/us/en/04/sae-ve-download/supportassist-enterprise-v4.0page for more details.

New Proactive Findings: This release includes ten new proactive Findings for vSphere, further expanding Skyline’s ability to alert you to potential issues in your environment.

Log Assist for Horizon Connection Server: We've just made it easier for you to upload a support log bundle for Horizon Connection Servers. Within Skyline Advisor, you can use Skyline Log Assist to initiate a log bundle for a Horizon Connection Server within your environment. To enable this functionality, you need to update your Skyline Collector to version 2.3, as well as update Horizon 7 Connection Server(s) to version 7.10. Please see the Horizon 7 version 7.10 Release Notes for more details.

Collector Health in Skyline Advisor:  The Collector health status is now included on the Collector Details page accessible from the Advisor Dashboard. For additional information, please visit the Troubleshooting an Unhealthy Skyline Collector KB article.

Skyline Advisor Federated Identity Management: Advisor now supports federated identity management. You can use your corporate domain account to access Skyline Advisor within VMware Cloud Services. To set up federated identity management, please see the Setting Up Federated Identity Management documentation. After completing the setup of federated identity management, ensure to add applicable Skyline service roles to each corporate domain user. These roles include Skyline Advisor and Skyline Collector.

Skyline Collector Improved Active Directory Authentication: Before this release, anonymous bind was required to enable Active Directory authentication. Now, anonymous bind is no longer required, and an Account Username and Password is now utilized to validate the Skyline Collector to Active Directory.

For more information on the new features above see our Skyline blog post, Advisor and Collector release notes.

Thank you for your continued use of Skyline proactive support!