The DNS Server monitor tests are improved with the additional Health check Allowed DNS Results. This field allows the user to configure the list of expected values, which depend on the selected DNS Record Type:

• If the DNS Record Type is “A” or “AAAA”, this field allows the user to configure the list of IP addresses that are considered “healthy” for the resolved IP address of the testing DNS query. If the DNS Server monitor test query resolves to multiple IP addresses, they should all be part of the configured list. If the resolved IP addresses are not in the allowed list, the test Health will be set to Critical.
• If the DNS Record Type is “CNAME*”,* the field allows the user to specify a comma-separated list of canonical name records that are considered "healthy”.
• If the DNS Record Type is “NS”, the field allows the user to specify a comma-separated list of server names that are considered "healthy”.

The following screenshot shows the Allowed DNS Results field in the DNS Server monitor configuration.

The Kentik Synthetics HTTP/API and Web Page Load tests now support checking of the HTTP Response Headers to determine the Health condition of the test.

The user can configure one or more expected Response Headers:

• If the Value is omitted, then any value will be considered valid
• Value can be specified as a regular expression
• Value can be specified as a comma-separated list of possible valid values

If the configured headers exist in the response, but are not equal to the expected values, or do not exist in the Response at all, the test health will be set to Critical.

The screenshot below demonstrates the example configuration of this feature.

Customers can now apply a single notification channel to one or more alert policies.

From the Alert Policies page, select the policies that you would like to use, and click on the "Add Notifications" button:

Then select your existing or create a new notification channel and select "Continue"

The selected policies will now use the selected Notification Channel 

You can now schedule Silent Mode for alerts with a start and stop time for a policy or a pattern creation. This new feature will allow customers to silence alerts during maintenance windows automatically, for example.

We are happy to announce the support for the Google Cloud firewalls for Kentik Cloud. 

For customers looking for an easy and simple way to check and troubleshoot connectivity inside GCP and see what type of traffic is being denied by the configured firewall rules, we show that under the "Details" sidebar for every VPC.

We added a new dimension for the Data Explorer, allowing customers to use the Subscription name to identify traffic flows and create alerts and dashboards.

Previously only Subscription ids were used for that purpose, and that’s not ideal, as ids are not easily humanly readable and are machine-generated.

This quarter we started working on supporting the OCI cloud.

The first iteration of the work will include the cloud map showing all the basic OCI cloud networking objects, such as regions, VCN (OCI equivalent of VPC), Subnets, On-prem assets, and VPN links. 

We are pleased to announce the release of the latest version (1.7.0) of the Kentik Grafana plugin.

In this release, our primary focus was on enhancing compatibility with the latest Grafana 10 and upcoming versions. To achieve this, we have transitioned from the legacy "Angular" plugin framework to the modern "React" framework.

Please note that the Kentik Grafana plugin requires a minimum Grafana version of 8.3.0 or higher. To facilitate the upgrade process, please follow these steps:

• Restart Grafana: To ensure the seamless integration of the updated plugin, kindly restart your Grafana instance.
• Restart the Plugin: Navigate to the Plugins section in your Grafana interface, locate the Kentik Connect Pro plugin, and disable it by clicking the Disable button. Afterward, enable the plugin by clicking the Enable button.

With regards to functionality, the new version of the Kentik Grafana plugin retains all the features present in the previous releases, related to the creation of dashboard panels and seamless visualization of flow data. However, please note that the Devices management feature which included the creation of new devices and editing existing ones, has been removed.

Looking ahead, we are committed to enhancing the Kentik Grafana plugin further by introducing new capabilities and incorporating valuable feedback from our users. We encourage you to share your ideas for improvement in the comments section or submit your feature requests through our dedicated Customer Success team.

We are excited to bring you more feature-rich updates in the future.

Upon popular request, we've added a few functionalities to the Subscription capabilities that you can see throughout the portal when you click on the [Share] button.
Read on.

• You can now set a custom filename for any report that you want to subscribe to, with the option to add a specific Date Marker to it.
• We have made the email recipients of a subscription more granular, now including: To, CC and BCC

As Connectivity Costs is one of our most in-demand workflows, we've spent some extra time this quarter to address a much-requested change from our users: Billing Cycle Day and Contract End Dates have now been moved down from the Provider level to the Cost Group level within the provider. Read on.

Billing Cycles and Contract End dates are now a Cost Group level attribute

The main pet peeve our users had was that it is pretty common to have multiple IP Transit contracts with the same provider with a different billing date and contract end date. This was indeed a design flaw on our end when we initially released the workflow, and we're pleased to announce we have now corrected it.

All provider contract dates have been transferred to the child cost group objects within all providers and you can now modify them at will at a cost group level.

Let's see what it looks like, as the impacts on the Connectivity Cost workflow UI are multiple.

The new Cost Group Settings panel now contains Billing Cycle Start Date and Contract End Date fields. 

These are now visible on the cost group cards within a provider.

Provider Cards in the Provider Management screen now display these dates as part of each Cost Group entry.

The landing page Calendar Side panel now shows cards that correspond to cost groups, instead of providers, when it comes to Invoices Due and Contract Expiries. 

On the Provider Details Screen, cost groups with a Billing Cycle Date in the past are displayed in solid color, while the ones with a Billing Cycle Date in the future are displayed as estimates with a striped color. 

All Cost Group entries on the Provider Details table now show a progress bar displaying how far from the Billing Cycle Date each Cost Group is at the time of viewing, with a color that varies as we get closer to the billing date.

Download the entire SNMP Sample Set for Billing reconciliation

What do you do when the Kentik cost displayed at the end of your billing cycle doesn't match your providers' invoice? Generally, you enter a dispute which requires you to provide your own calculation together with the SNMP 5min samples it's based on.

We have made this possible in this addition to the Cost Group side panel in a providers' screen, where in the click of a button, the entire set of data samples for all interfaces (In and Out) gets generated as a CSV file for you to look at, also containing interface names, descriptions, device...

...and wait, there's more

While at it, we've also made the "Suggested Provider" right-side panel collapsible for those of our users did not want to see it in the Manage Providers screen: