8.9.0 Release Notes

Release date: 2021-09-29

The release notes for Snow Commander version 8.9.0 include new features, upgrade notes, deprecated and removed features, resolved issues, and known issues. To access release notes for previous versions, go to the Release Notes Archive.

What's new

This release introduces the following new features:

The Commander Service Portal now offers language options.

Service Portal users now have the option to select between English and Korean languages. Administrators can control which languages are available for Service Portal users to select.

For more information, see Service Portal languages and Select Service Portal language options.

Enabling language support may require modifications so your installation behaves as expected. For more information, see Upgrade notes.

You can now manage admin access rights more efficiently. This improvement allows you to grant admin access to all cloud accounts at once, and also eliminates the need to manually assign admin access to each cloud account that is subsequently added to Commander.

For more information, see Assign access rights to administrative users.

To help further integrations and automation, these new features are introduced in the Commander API.

  • You can now manage access rights for admin users more efficiently. The new endpoints are:
    • GET /users/{name}/access-rights/admin-access-to-all-clouds
    • POST /users/{name}/access-rights/grant-admin-access-to-all-clouds
    • POST /users/{name}/access-rights/revoke-access-to-all-clouds
  • You can now configure the languages available to Service Portal users and the default language. The new endpoints are:
    • GET /service-portal/languages
    • PATCH /service-portal/languages

For an overview of the API, see Get Started. To browse the API reference, see Commander API.

  • You can now use an Azure custom role that grants the least privilege required to manage Azure resources in Commander. For more information, see Getting started with Azure.
  • Commander now supports Microsoft Windows Server 2022.

Upgrade notes

You can upgrade to Commander version 8.9.0 from versions 8.0.x - 8.8.x. See Upgrade Commander.

Before upgrading, it's recommended that you review all release notes between the version you're currently using and the version you're upgrading to. Release notes for previous Commander versions are available at Release Notes Archive.

Enabling language support

Enabling language support with version 8.9.0 may require modifications so your installation behaves as expected.

These changes aren't required if you want to use English only.

  • If you're using SQL Server, you must use SQL Server 2019 or later. If you want to use an older version of SQL Server or have questions about the setup for language support, contact support by creating a case through the Snow Support Portal.
  • If you're using PostgreSQL, ensure your database is UTF-8 encoded. The Commander default PostgreSQL installation has UTF-8 character encoding. If your database is currently not UTF-8 encoded or you wish to change the locale of your database to better reflect your data sort order, contact support by creating a case through the Snow Support Portal.
  • If you're using PostgreSQL, for table sorting to work correctly when using a language other than English, administrators need to install Commander on a machine that’s set to US English in the underlying operating system. Sorting will be based on the windows operating system locale at the time of the installation.
  • If you change languages, events that occurred before upgrade and were displayed in the Service Portal will be in English only, but new events will be in the selected language.

Deprecations and removals

These are the deprecations and removals for version 8.9.0. Any deprecations or removals encountered in subsequent releases will be noted in the relevant release notes.

Deprecated

  • Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is deprecated as of version 8.7.0 and will be removed in a future release.
  • vCenter datastore scanning is deprecated, and this functionality will be removed in a future release.
  • Service Portal access for non-organizational users is deprecated, and this functionality will be removed in a future release.
  • VM Billing Report for Public Clouds: You can use the VM Billing Report for private cloud environments; however, for public or hybrid cloud environments it's recommended that you use the Cloud Billing Report. The ability to use the VM Billing Report for public clouds will be removed in a future release.
  • End of Life Policy, Suspect Policy, and Approval Policy and the relevant VM states are deprecated as of version 7.0.2 and will be removed in a future release.
  • Quarterly and weekly timespans for displaying costs in the Admin Portal and the Service Portal are being deprecated. The options that will remain for showing costs are Daily, Monthly, and Annually.

Removed

  • Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP4 was deprecated in version 8.7.0 and is now removed.

Resolved issues

  • 21731 Cloud costing now works properly when a Windows account or domain account is used for the database connection regardless of whether NTLM v2 authentication is enabled for the connection.
  • 21711 Upgrades from version 8.0 to 8.6.2 now work as expected.
  • 21637 When a Service Portal user switches organizations, they're no longer prevented from requesting a service if their Service Portal role for the new organization hasn't been granted the “show cost” permission.
  • 21507 Workflow steps that capture script outputs now properly handle unicode multi-byte characters.
  • 21500 It's now possible to generate the VM Billing Report on accounts that have large databases.
  • 21476 Upgrades no longer fail if you have a saved search that includes a location filter for a VMware host.
  • 21154 Improvements have been made to speed up resource allocation through Automated Deployment when the number of deployment destinations increases.
  • 21133 Authentication was occasionally blocked when using SAML SSO (with OKTA) for the Service Portal. This has now been resolved.
  • 21109 The Estimated Cost chart in the Service Portal now displays as expected when you select the Monthly and Daily time range.
  • 20986 If a task fails when applying rightsizing recommendations for a VM, the destination now shows "New Request".
  • 20985 Applying rightsizing recommendations for VMs through the Service Portal now works as expected.
  • 20915 Cost anomaly detection will now initiate after a full 24-hour day has passed to prevent evaluation of partial days. This will avoid false anomaly alerts in UTC+ time zone environments. This change doesn't delay billing data retrieval.
  • 19566 The number of succeeded cloud accounts for billing record tasks now displays as expected.

Known issues

These are the known issues for version 8.9.0. Any known issues encountered in subsequent releases will be noted in the relevant release notes.

  • 21110 You can't export tags for resource groups created by Databricks services.

    If you use Databricks in your environment, it's recommended not to export custom attributes as tags.

  • 20314 Private cloud costs may not accurately reflect storage costs after a billing reset has been run against a private cloud account.

    It's recommended that you don't perform a billing reset on a private cloud without guidance from Snow Support.

  • 18280 The estimated license cost for an Azure SQL VM incorrectly displays the license cost on the SQL Server. It should display the license cost on the VM that the SQL Server is running on. Note that the actual costs for an Azure SQL VM are correctly displayed.
  • 16002 When the WebMKS console connection method is configured, Internet Explorer 11 users may be unable to see the mouse pointer in the console session.

    Workaround: To open a console to a Windows VM from Internet Explorer 11 when using WebMKS, try enabling mouse trails with the shortest option. Or, use the VMRC plug-in method instead of the WebMKS method. For Linux VMs, use the VMRC plug-in connection method. See Console connection methods to learn how to change the console connection method for HTML5 browsers.

  • 9223 In some cases, when you attempt to generate a Cloud Billing report and use the Group By option of Cost Adjustments, the report will fail to generate.