New functionality and change list¶

Release 20.12¶

Release 20.12 is an enhancement to previous release 20.01 with some scalability, security, and usability improvements, new features and fixes to issues that were found in previous releases. This zStorage release has many key enhancements that continue to round out the Zadara zStorage enterprise grade feature set!

What’s new in Zadara Cloud¶

Zadara Kubernetes Operator¶

Containers are an emerging method for running applications. Adoption of Kubernetes (and containers usage in general) is growing in the enterprise. Container based applications require persistent storage that Zadara VPSA provides.

The Zadara Operator provides storage and data management for K8s stateful applications as a cloud-native service, while leveraging Zadara’s enterprise grade Storage-as-a-Service VPSA for provisioning and managing persistent storage.

Zadara Operator provides:

Zadara CSI driver automatic installation and management Automatic K8s application discovery.
Application protection using an intelligent and efficient snapshots mechanism.
Custom snapshots scheduling for application protection.
Instant application clone.
CLI for centralized management for Zadara’s K8s assets.
Migrate application from one cluster to another.

More information can be found at the Zadara Operator Github repository.

IPv6¶

Zadara storage now fully supports IPv6 for both hosts connectivity and management purposes.

Security¶

TLSv1.1 protocol was disabled for all Zadara Web Applications, TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3 are the supported TLS protocols.

What’s new in VPSA Storage Array and Flash Array¶

Auto Tiering¶

With the VPSA Flash Array, customers can now have primary storage pools consisting of both flash (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD) or flash (SSD) and object storage (Zadara or other S3 compatible object storage). With these new hybrid primary storage zStorage Flash Array deployments, data is automatically placed on the higher performing flash drives if frequent access is needed, and the less frequently accessed data is placed on the lower cost hard disks/object storage .

The business value of Auto Tiering lies in the fact that it enables efficient use of the underlying storage media/resources.

New Flash Array models that support tiering were introduced:

Max Volume Size increase¶

With the 20.12 release, the maximum capacity supported per a VPSA (and a single volume allocated on it) increases from 200TB / 250TB to 500TB in VPSA Storage Array, and VPSA Flash Array. This will be very appealing to customers using large file systems for backup repositories, media repositories and/or large file archives.

File Analytics¶

This release introduces the new built in file analytics capabilities for VPSA NAS shares. Zadara File Analytics helps customers navigate through data and gives them better visibility to manage their data more effectively. File Analytics helps solve data challenges around ownership, storage consumption, storage optimization, and data protection. It also reports on key growth trends and capacity utilization trends

File Access Audit¶

THis release keeps full access log per file system. Users can now have access to a secure log of any file operation (read/write/rename/etc… for auditing purposes.

File History¶

This release adds File History capabilities to NFS shares, as it is supported for SMB shares. File History allows quick restore of any specific version of a given file.

Major Changes & bug fixes¶

20.12 Build 317¶

VPSA Storage Array and VPSA Flash Array

4069, 17314 - File access audit Logging was added to NFS and SMB shares
12992 - Server Monitoring Capability was added
13037 - The ability to Mirror via a Proxy server was added
13244 - External KMS was added as an alternative for manual encryption password
13877 - Fixed an issue where user mapping is invalid on Mirror destination in the sub-domain environment
15104 - It is now possible to change a volume export name irrespective of its state
15126 - Added the option to set individual shares (NFS/SMB) as Read Only or Read Write
16038 - Connecting to Remote VPSA over VNI (Secondary Network) is now supported
16331 - Ability for a single NFS file recovery from a snapshot was added (NFS File History)
16340 - Improved SMB signing performance
16484 - fixed an issue where Destination VPSA was deleted, and there was no option to break the remote clone from source VPSA
16642 - Fixed Low SMB performance issue as result of “case sensitive” that was set to “no” by default
16717 - Changing Password does not reset API Token
16823 - Provided the ability to toggle “mangled names” on SMB shares
16830 - Blocking Servers deletion if there are open iSCSI connections to it
17175 - New pool types, with 500TB limit, were added. Depot pool on Storage Array, Throughput Optimized pool on Flash Array
17951 - “Linux iSCSI Connect Script” now supports both curl and wget
18096 - New pool types for Flash Array. IOPS-Optimized, Balanced, Throughput Optimized
18276, 18506 - File Analytics is now supported for file shares
18877 - VPSA volume ‘protection’ column is now ‘Attributes’, icons display for FLC indexing, encryption and automatic expansion
18940 - Fixed an issue where User that belongs to ignored sub-domain can access files on the SMB volume
18980 - Fixed an issue where SMB Volume is still accessible after it was detached from the Server
17387 - TLSv1.1 protocol was disabled for all Zadara Web Applications, TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3 are the supported TLS protocols

VPSA Object Storage

12433 - Domain registration process for public IP was automated
15132, 16185, 18779 - Performance Dashboard was added
15419 - Virtual host style URL is now supported. It enables using the bucket name as part of host name
15907 - Added support for CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing)
16093 - Object level ACL support was added for the default policy permissions
16358 - “s3” default region name set to us-east-1
16543 - GUI enhancement that displays locked user information, and provides an option to unlock
17466 - Immutability support was added for the multipart objects
17515 - added the ability to restore previous object versions using s3browser on versioning enabled containers
17689 - It is now possible to use an external identity provider (Openstack Keystone) as the authentication engine
17753, 18465 - Object Storage now supports multiple VNIs. All configured networks can be either IPv4 or IPv6
18157 - A fix for handling swift API HTTP response code properly
18194 - Storage Policies offering was modified (Added: EC 2+1 and 2-Way MZ, removed 3way and EC 6+3)
18799 - Added metering statistics for s3api calls
18958 - Modified gradual policy expansion default value from 10% to 25%
18977 - The Capacity alert mechanism was improved to give better prediction for potential capacity shortage
17387 - TLSv1.1 protocol was disabled for all Zadara Web Applications, TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3 are the supported TLS protocols

Provisioning Portal

14368 - Encourage users to enable MFA for their Zadara accounts
18576 - An entire new “white labeling” to the Provisioning Portal has been implemented
17387 - TLSv1.1 protocol was disabled for all Zadara Web Applications, TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3 are the supported TLS protocols

Command Center

14784, 18040 - It is now possible to set any support ticket attributes (priority, to_user, rate limit, etc…) per VPSA
16847 - Active FE IP presentations across Command Center Tabs are now aligned
17002 - Block VPSA upgrade from a version that is more than 2 major releases behind, and block version downgrade
17292 - Noticeable indication was added on node display when a service is not available
17323 - Data reduction metrics for VPSA Flash Array added to the VPSA dashboard
17416 - When VPSA GUI is not accessible and GUI cannot be launched an error is shown
18041 - Event-log messages of addremove cache were modified to include cache capacity
18591 - An option to change the command center logo was added for White labeling purposes
17387 - TLSv1.1 protocol was disabled for all Zadara Web Applications, TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3 are the supported TLS protocols