What's New in N-able N-central 2022.7

Preview of the new macOS Agent

Our awesome Engineering teams have been hard at work thoroughly overhauling N-central’s macOS agent, and we’re really excited to let you try out a Preview of this new agent. Available as a separate download from the Actions → Download Agent/Probe page, the new macOS agent includes the following improvements:

  • Support for M1 processors

  • Proper notarization/signing of the installer

  • The macOS agent is now a separately releasable component, which means that once its installed, it’ll update itself with the latest bug fixes and new features, without requiring an upgrade to your N-central server

  • The foundation for supporting more real-time actions, such as the Tools menu, the Overview tab, and the real-time CPU and Memory graphs are included in this version of the macOS agent, and will be enabled in an upcoming release

  • Over 70 bug fixes in comparison to the “legacy” macOS agent

This first Preview of the new macOS agent allows you to install/uninstall the agent on test devices; in a future release of N-central, we’ll also allow you to push the new macOS agent via the Windows Probe, and upgrade the “legacy” macOS agent to the new binary.

Support for Ubuntu 20.04

N-central’s Linux agent has been updated to support Ubuntu 20.04; you’ll find a new installer that is specific to Ubuntu 20.04 under the Actions → Download Agent/Probe page, and in the Add/Import Devices wizard. The Operating System drop-down menu has also been updated to include Ubuntu 20.04.

Updates to Automation Manager

N-central 2022.7 comes bundled with Automation Manager 2.40, which is a significant upgrade over the version of Automation Manager (v2.19) that was included in earlier versions of N-central. Notable changes between v2.19 and v2.40 of Automation Manager include:

  • The AM Designer executable is now signed with the “N-able Solutions ULC and N-able Technologies LTD” software signing certificate.

  • Automation Manager is now a separately releasable component, which means that once its installed, it’ll update itself with the latest bug fixes, new objects and new features, without requiring an upgrade to your N-central server.

  • The “Reboot Prompt” object has been updated to include a new “Allow user to postpone past the limit” option. This new option is a “parent” of the existing “Allow user to decline reboot” option and makes it possible to further fine-tune how what options you want to present to your users when their machine needs to be rebooted.

  • A number of Partner-reported bugs have been addressed; please see the “Fixed Bugs” list in this document for details.

HP and HPE (HP Enterprise) Warranty Lookups

Due to changes by the vendor, N-central is unable to perform warranty lookups on HP and HPE devices. This functionality has been removed in N-central 2022.7, which allows you to manually specify the warranty expiry date and purchase date of your HP/HPE devices, without needing to worry about N-central overwriting those values. We will continue to work with the vendor, and look forward to re-enabling this functionality in the future.