VMware continues to enhance Skyline proactive technology with features and enhancements that improve the customer experience. We are excited to announce a recent Skyline Collector 2.4 release and a new Advisor release. If you have the Collector Auto Upgrade feature enabled, your Collectors will upgrade to the new version automatically. Otherwise, please update your Collector using the Skyline Collector’s VMware Appliance Management Interface (VAMI).
A brief summary of the new features is below. For additional details review the Skyline Collector and Skyline Advisor Release Notes.
With the Skyline Collector 2.4 release, you will see the following new features in Advisor:
Log Assist improvements
- Product connectivity check prior to initiating log bundle transfer: To help ensure successful log bundle transfers via Skyline Log Assist, Skyline will now perform product connectivity checks prior to initiating the transfer and notify you if connectivity issues exist so you can take corrective action. Once you have corrected the issue, you can initiate a re-validation check and then proceed with the Log Assist transfer.
- Enhanced status and error messaging for log bundle transfers:
User experience updates
Several enhancements have been implemented to improve the Advisor interface and make it easier for you to use the features and functionality.
New Findings and Recommendations
We also released several new proactive Findings and Recommendations in the following categories:
- Technical Support Trending Issues – Alert you to top issues based on our analysis of common Support Requests opened by customers
- Horizon Findings – Assist you with your corporate desktop and work from home initiatives with 2 additional “Moderate” proactive Findings now available for Horizon
- VMware Security Advisories – We continue to include Security Advisories to alert you to objects that are vulnerable to known security risks
- Skyline Health for vSphere and vSAN Alignment – Ensure that vSphere and vSAN Findings are available in both Skyline Advisor and Skyline Health for vSphere / vSAN
Note that you will need to upgrade your Collector to be able to see all of the new Findings and Recommendations pertinent to your environment.
Security feature enhancement
The enhanced Hostname Verification feature allows you to enable or disable an additional check on the HTTPS connections to “vcsa.vmware.com”. This ensures the Skyline Collector is connecting to vcsa.vmware.com by looking at the destination certificate “dnsName” or “subjectAltName” fields. Hostname Verification was available in previous versions of the Skyline Collector, however, was not configurable within the Skyline Collector.
Support for IPv6
Many customers are using IPv6 in their environments, and as such, the new Skyline Collector 2.4 release includes support for IPv6.
Bug fixes, usability and performance improvements
In addition to the new capabilities listed above, we have fixed a few minor bugs, implemented several usability updates and made some performance improvements to further enhance your Skyline experience.
Final notice about older versions of Skyline Collector
As of February 2020 month-end, Skyline Collector v2.1 and v2.2 are no longer available for new downloads. We will continue to support v2.1 through end of May 2020 and v2.2 through September 17th, 2020. We kindly request you upgrade your Collector to the latest version if you have not already done so. If you have the “Auto Upgrade” feature enabled, your Collector will upgrade automatically.
