New and updated features.

These release notes give an overview of the changes for Release 2021-02.x to 2021-08.x of the VMware Tanzu Observability (formerly known as VMware Aria Operations for Applications) service.

Delta Counter Changes

The implementation of delta counters, which was deprecated last year, will reach end of life on April 4th, 2021.

Wavefront updates the system dashboard and integration content. But, you have to update dashboards, charts, and alerts that use custom delta counters. See Wavefront Obsolescence and Remediation for details.

Create New PagerDuty Incident For Each Failing Series

You can now configure alerts to receive separate PagerDuty notifications for each series that meets the alert condition. Select Advanced > Unique PagerDuty Incidents when you create or edit an alert. With this setting turned on, you get separate PagerDuty notifications for both of the following series because the env tag is different.

#first series
app.errors source=machine env=prod

#second series
app.errors source=machine env=stage

Shows a screenshot of the advanced alert settings with the Unique PagerDuty Incidents option highlighted in red.

Application Permissions

A Super Admin user or a user with Applications permissions can configure the Apdex threshold (T).

New and Changed functions

limit() Function Supports Histograms

You can now use the limit() function on histogram data.

New mvalues() Function

Use the mvalues() function to count the number of the unique values over a shifting time window.

The example below returns the number of unique bytes sent to and from the database, grouped by environment over a 5-minute time window.

mvalues(5m, ts(~sample.db.bytes.sent), env)

Tracing Improvements and New Features

Zoom In Setting on Application Map

The Fade Labels on Zoom setting hides labels of small services and gradually exposes them as you zoom in on the application map. See Customize the application map view.

Before After
The Fade Labels on Zoom setting is not selected: The application map view you get if you didn't select the Fade Labels on Zoom setting. The Fade Labels on Zoom setting is selected: The application map view you get when you select the Fade Labels on Zoom setting.

New Operation Dashboard to See Operation RED Metrics

This default, read-only dashboard lets you explore RED metrics of an operation. See Operation Dashboard. A screenshot of the operation dashboard.

span.kind Tag Required For External Java Databases

The span.kind tag is required when you define external databases for Java Applications. See required span tags for an external Java database service.

Miscellaneous Improvements