Skyline Advisor Pro
Starting with the Skyline Advisor November 2021 release, Skyline Advisor Pro is introduced.
Skyline Advisor Pro enables you to receive proactive intelligence with new insights, accelerated analysis, and simplified design. Skyline Advisor Pro adds new features while retaining Skyline Advisor's existing functionality. It is faster, smarter, and easier than Skyline Advisor. Similar to Advisor, Advisor Pro is available to all customers with Production or Premier Support, VMware Success 360, and vRealize Cloud Universal subscriptions at no additional charge.
To activate Skyline Advisor Pro, make sure you have auto-upgrade functionality enabled or manually upgrade to Skyline Collector 3.0 on all collectors.
Skyline Advisor Pro Features and Capabilities
Advisor Pro Dashboard
As a Skyline Advisor Pro user, you can interact with a new modernized Dashboard with enhanced features.
Dashboard Features:
Account & User Info: Displays User Name, Organization Name, Account Id, Entitlement Accounts, and Account Types.
Findings card: The Findings card displays the last analysis date-time stamp, a number of Active Findings, Findings breakdown based on type and category, affected and remediated object count based on the last 7 days of data at any given point.
Skyline Advisor Pro Historical Trends
Skyline Advisor Pro supports the Historical Trends for Findings and Remediations within VMware Skyline. It displays trend information based upon the number of findings, and affected objects, within your environment. Furthermore, the number of findings, objects, remediated is displayed. As a Skyline Advisor Pro user, you can see an aggregated count of the following:
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Products that are in an Unhealthy state
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Products that switched to a Healthy state
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Existing Affected Objects
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New Affected Objects
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Remediated Objects
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Events
You can filter the findings by inventory, severity, category, hidden findings, and date range. When you hover over the bars, a tooltip with detailed object metrics will appear. When you click the bar, the graph card expands and the Datagrid of findings for that bar appears below.
The Findings card on the Skyline Advisor Pro Dashboard has the VIEW HISTORICAL TRENDS link which redirects to the Historical Trends Information page under Findings and Recommendations.
Notifications card: Displays the EoGS / EoTG and Collector Health Notifications. The VIEW ALL link opens a page that displays the notifications as a list including all notifications on EoGS / EoTG plus Collector Health.
Collectors Card: Displays the total collector count along with the breakdown of collectors per the collector statuses. The VIEW ALL link redirects you to the Collector Health Overview (Collector Details) page.
Inventory Summary card: Displays last analysis date-time stamp, inventory type, and count for each supported product. Also displays 0 when there are no product types added to the Skyline Collector. The VIEW ALL link redirects to the Inventory Tab within Advisor Pro.
Log Assist card: Displays the following support requests:
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Open Support Requests: Shows a total count of open Support Requests for this user + Org + EA association (existing SR Visibility logic). The View All link next to Support Requests redirects to the Support Requests Details page.
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Active Log Assists: Displays In-Progress and Requested Log Requests that are applicable for the current user + Account (existing data retention and viewing policy).
The VIEW ALL link next to Log Requests redirects to the Log Library page within Advisor Pro.
Operational Overview card: Displays the existing charts of - Cluster Configuration, Host Configuration, and VM Configuration per the existing logic and functionality. The VIEW ALL link redirects to the Operational Overview page.
Skyline Advisor Pro Inventory Enhancements
The inventory page displays additional details on top of the existing data and functionalities associated with the Inventory tab today. The Object details for supported objects are displayed in the expandable view along with all links/data points. It displays the following:
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Object Details, Products Linked, Solutions, and Integrations.
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The Support Lifecycle Phase displays the current product lifecycle phase and product end phase.
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Findings related to information for specific Inventory objects display the count of all Findings that affect these objects with a breakdown based on severity - Critical, Moderate, and Trivial.
The VIEW FINDINGS link redirects users to the Active Findings page.
Skyline Advisor Pro Settings
You can use the Light and Dark theme toggle to move around between the thematic view you prefer. Click the toggle option next to the Settings on the top to switch between Light and Dark themes.
EoGS / EoTG for Products
This feature enables you to view the product lifecycle statuses for all your VMware products. You can plan upgrades ahead of time and ensure the continuity of support for the purchased products. The Notification card on the Skyline Advisor Pro Dashboard displays notifications about products nearing the end of their support phases that are 90 days prior to EoGS/EoTG.
The Inventory tab displays the information about the current support phase and the date of EoGS/EoTG.
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Shows an informative warning message alongside the objects on the Inventory Page when a product version is set to reach End of General Support.
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Shows an informative critical warning message alongside the objects on the Inventory Pag when a product version is set to reach End of Technical Guidance.
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Shows an informative warning message on the Product Details Page object lists when a product version is set to reach End of General Support.
Accelerated Analysis
Skyline Advisor Pro provides accelerated analysis which identifies issues, remediation updates, and inventory changes more quickly. Unlike its predecessor, which took up to 48 hours to surface issues, Advisor Pro can surface issues and inventory changes within 6 hours, giving you more time to act on its findings and recommendations and greater confidence that your environment is up to date.
Skyline Insights Report for Success 360
Skyline Advisor Pro users with S360 entitlements can access the Skyline Advisor Pro Insights Report page through the S360 Proactive Support Service Team. The Skyline Insights Report summarizes outstanding wellness assessments of systems with active findings, the system that needs an upgrade for vCenter connected products, and health check actions. It is not a self-service feature for S360 customers; instead, it is a service wrapper within Skyline Advisor Pro made available to customers via SPSS (S360 Proactive Support & Services Team).
The Insights Report Landing Page has the following attributes:
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Retention - The user can search reports from the past 6 months.
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Views - The landing page has two views i.e Grid view and List view, the default is Grid View.
The Skyline Advisor Pro Insights Report page provides you with the following information:
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Insights Report Name
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The Insights Report created date
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The Insights Report type, either standard or custom
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Graph or Chart representation of the number of Active Findings based on Resolution type.
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Graph or Chart representation of the number of Active Findings categorized by Security, Compute, Storage, Network, and Operation Management.
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Collector Health and Endpoints (vCenters, NSX (products)) with critical findings.
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A short, readable executive summary of the environment. The Executive Summary report is a view-only option for Customers.
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Proactive Remediation
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The total number of Findings resolved over the specified time period.
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Findings chart that represents Findings Resolved Upon Upgrade, Findings Resolved Upon Configuration Changes, and Findings Resolved Based On Category.
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A graph depicting the total number of Affected objects versus the number of Affected objects that have been resolved.
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Remediation Trends - a bar graph that shows the number of Findings that have been resolved month after month or over the specified time period. It should also show the change (up or down arrow) in the number of Findings resolved from the previous month.
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Outstanding Critical Findings - Total number of critical findings that have not been resolved over a period of 30 days
Skyline Insights Report includes the following features and capabilities:
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The ability to click the interactive charts Findings in the Skyline Insights Report.
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The ability to share the Skyline Insights Report with members of your organization, so that team members can check Skyline Advisor Pro for the most up-to-date status on Findings on a regular basis.
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The ability to download the reports as PDF or CSV formats and share Skyline Insights reports.
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The ability to add, edit, and delete comments to different sections of the Skyline Insights Report.
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The ability to filter available Insights Reports by report type (standard/custom) and date created.
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The ability to export individual Finding details in the Proactive Remediation Findings table view.