Key Enhancements¶
Release 24.03 is a major version, that includes new features, scalability, security and usability improvements, and bug fixes.
Backup to Object Storage¶
zCompute 24.03 introduces Backup to Object Storage (B2OS).
zCompute Backup to Object Storage (B2OS) extends backup and restore capabilities beyond local block storage. It enables backing up and restoring VMs and volumes that are protected by protection-group to and from Zadara Object Storage systems.
These Zadara Object Storage systems can also reside in different physical locations than the source zCompute cloud, allowing recovery to any zCompute cloud in the event of a site-level failure.
On top of this capability, from zCompute v24.03, Protection Groups also provide VM-level crash-consistent backups. Backup snapshots are taken as an atomic operation on all volumes of a protected VM, treating the VM’s volumes as a consistency group.
zCompute B2OS is an integral feature of zCompute. It provides full backup and restore functionality without requiring third-party software or installing software agents on protected VMs.
Protection groups are backup policies that define the backup schedule for protected VMs and volumes, including the backup interval and retention period.
With the introduction of B2OS, you can optionally configure protection groups to back up protected VMs and volumes to Zadara Object Storage.
Tenant admins can now access the Management > Configuration tile’s External Endpoints configuration, required for defining remote Object Storage.
Known limitation¶
By design, disabling a Protection Group only disables the Protection Group’s automatic scheduled backups.
A disabled Protection Group still allows the Trigger Now action for an on-the-fly user-initiated backup of the Protection Group’s protected resources.
EKS-D Upgrade¶
Important
EKS-D deployments currently running on zCompute must be upgraded, before doing the upgrade to v24.03.
For all zCompute clouds running v24.08.4, the upgrade machine image is already available in the Machine Images > Marketplace.
The main change that requires this upgrade is the way Kubernetes connections to EBS volumes.
Another recommended change is to use Kubernetes instances for running the Kubernetes cluster control nodes, instead of using Auto-Scaling Groups (ASG). See the README for EKS-D the public Zadara Examples GitHub repository.
Automatic OS Detection and VM OS Settings¶
zCompute 24.03 introduces automatic OS detection when creating a VM instance.
In the Compute > Instances > Create Instance dialog, the Operating System field is automatically populated according to the OS and version detected in the selected source Image, ISO or Volume. The Operating System field is read-only, and cannot be overwritten by users.
zCompute UI Features and Improvements¶
zCompute 24.03’s new UI features and improvements include localization for zCompute supported languages:
English (default)
German
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Spanish
The major UI features and improvements include:
Storage Classes Utilization Visualization¶
MSP Admins can benefit from an improved visualization of utilization per Storage Class:
The Monitoring > Overview screen:
The Storage Classes Consumption tile displays a graphic utilization summary for each Storage Class.
The Storage Availability & Health tile displays each Storage Class as a color-coded summary status.
Selecting a Storage Class in this tile redirects to the Storage Management > Storage Classes > [Storage Class] detailed utilization screen.
The Storage Management > Storage Classes screen displays a summary table of utilizaion per Storage Class.
Selecting a Storage Class displays detailed utilization information for that Storage Class.
AWS Instance Type Aliases¶
zCompute 24.03 introduces the Compute > Instance Type Aliases screen that displays a table listing each zCompute Instance Type’s AWS Alias, number of vCPUs and RAM capacity, and number of VM instances per Instance Type.
Placement Rules¶
From zCompute 24.03, via the Compute > Rules screen, MSP Admins can create, simulate (test VMs for rule compliance), apply and remove rules for placing VMs with specified VM tags on nodes with specified node tags.
V2Z alignments for v24.03¶
The V2Z utility in Toolbox Fedora 2.3.5 has several improvements including:
Different Windows VirtIO drivers can be used in the V2Z migration process.
See Replacing Toolbox Windows VirtIO Driver for further details.
The V2Z command line now supports VM and volume names that contain spaces, by enclosing the VM or volume name between single quotes.
Notable fixes¶
The V2Z utility in Toolbox Fedora 2.3.5 includes the following fixes:
NK-11267
A V2Z migration case was discovered, where an invalid parameter resulted in a late fail.
This has been resolved with added initial validation checks rendering a fast fail when invalid.
NK-11575
V2Z preflight checks were failing for minimal permission users.
This has been resolved so that the V2Z preflight checks succeed for users with the minimal required permissions.
Known limitation¶
V2Z migrates all VMs as UEFI¶
V2Z migration always migrates VMs to boot in UEFI mode, even if the source VM is in BIOS mode.
As a workaround to update the migrated VM to boot using BIOS,
after completion of the VM migration run the following symp command:
vm update --hw-firmware-type bios <vm-id>
Instance Types¶
Version 24.03 extends the number of VM Instance Types, introducing the Z16 and ZP16 types for memory-intensive use cases.
For more details, see Instance Types:
OS Support and new Marketplace Images¶
The zCompute 24.03 Marketplace includes the upgraded Toolbox Fedora version 2.3.5, along with updated and newly added OS and tool images.
See Machine Images Marketplace, or go to the Machine Images > Marketplace screen in the UI to see latest available image versions for download.
Direct Subnets in VLANs Management¶
Known limitation¶
Direct Subnet in VLAN Management via CLI/API only¶
On completion of Creating a Direct Subnet, the Direct Subnet is immediately available on the specified VPC, but it is not displayed in the Account Networking > VLANs Management screen.
However, the Direct Subnet’s network_id can be viewed using the symp
vlan-pool vlan get <id> command. For example:
vlan-pool vlan get 1a8cd9e6-0d7d-4ada-ac5b-0bad3fdd291e
+-----------------------+--------------------------------------+
| id | 1a8cd9e6-0d7d-4ada-ac5b-0bad3fdd291e |
| name | none |
| account_vlan_pool_id | 93cb6144-7f28-44c3-9492-0b46d13da88d |
| created_at | 2024-11-18T11:47:50Z |
| guest_network_pool_id | 684703f5-d641-4ddb-be82-62b81a024509 |
| network_id | cecc1054-538a-467e-a615-83e750ce04b4 |
| project_vlan_pool_id | adb0d5ba-7927-4813-aea7-d0f0d568d808 |
| updated_at | 2024-11-18T11:47:51Z |
| vlan_tag_id | 40 |
+-----------------------+--------------------------------------+
DVS and VLAN Management Granular Policies¶
From zCompute 23.04, tenant admins can now provide users with new granular access policies for VLAN management and DVS network management:
DVSReadOnlyAccessDVSFullAccessVlanMgmtReadOnlyAccessVlanMgmtAccountsAssignAccessVlanMgmtFullAccess
To apply access policies to users, see Managing Users Permissions.
Windows KMS with AD / VPC DNS¶
Windows VMs can now participate in an AD domain, regardless of whether their license is provided from a central Windows KMS.
Large Cluster Systems (LCS) live upgrade¶
In zCompute versions prior to version 24.03, LCS upgrades involved coordinating a maintenance window for scheduled downtime. LCS clusters can now be upgraded live, eliminating the need for downtime, and without payload disruption.
Note
LCS upgrades are implemented solely by Zadara Support, and must be coordinated in advance.
For more information on LCS, see Large Cluster Systems (LCS).