Share:

What’s new in CloudStack 4.11? | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive

Version 4.11 of Apache CloudStack has been released with some exciting new features and a long list of improvements and fixes. It includes more than 400 commits, 220 pull requests, and fixes more than 250 issues.  This version has been worked on for 8 months and is the first release of the 4.11 LTS releases, which will be supported until  1 July 2019.

We’ve been heavily involved in this release at ShapeBlue; our engineering team has contributed a number of the major new features and our own Rohit Yadav has been the 4.11 Release Manager.

As well as some really interesting new features, CloudStack 4.11 has significant performance and reliability improvements to the Virtual Router.

This is far from an exhaustive list, but here are the headline items that we think are most significant.

New Features and Improvements

  • Support for XenServer 7.1 and 7.2, and improved support for VMware 6.5.
  • Host-HA framework and HA-provider for KVM hosts with and NFS as primary storage, and a new background polling task manager.
  • Secure agents communication: new certificate authority framework and a default built-in root CA provider.
  • New network type – L2.
  • CloudStack metrics exporter for Prometheus.
  • Cloudian Hyperstore connector for CloudStack.
  • Annotation feature for CloudStack entities such as hosts.
  • Separation of volume snapshot creation on primary storage and backing operation on secondary storage.
  • Limit admin access from specified CIDRs.
  • Expansion of Management IP Range.
  • Dedication of public IPs to SSVM and CPVM.
  • Support for separate subnet for SSVM and CPVM.
  • Bypass secondary storage template copy/transfer for KVM.
  • Support for multi-disk OVA template for VMware.
  • Storage overprovisioning for local storage.
  • LDAP mapping with domain scope, and mapping of LDAP group to an account.
  • Move user across accounts.
  • Support for “VSD managed” networks with Nuage Networks.
  • Extend config drive support for user data, metadata, and password (Nuage networks).
  • Nuage domain template selection per VPC and support for network migration.
  • Managed storage enhancements.
  • Support for watchdog timer to KVM Instances.
  • Support for Secondary IPv6 Addresses and Subnets.
  • IPv6 Prefix Delegation support in basic networking.
  • Ability to specific MAC address while deploying VM or adding a NIC to a VM.
  • VMware dvSwitch security policies configuration in network offering
  • Allow more than 7 NICs to be added to a VMware VM.
  • Network rate usage for guest offering for VRs.
  • Usage metrics for VM snapshot on primary storage.
  • Enable Netscaler inline mode.
  • NCC integration in CloudStack.
  • The retirement of the Midonet network plugin.

UI Improvements

  • High precision of metrics percentage in the dashboard:
  • Event timeline – filter related events:

  • Navigation improvements between related entities:
  • Bulk operation support for stopping and destroying VMs (note: minor known issue where manual refresh required afterwards):
  • List view improvements and additional columns with state icon:






Structural Improvements

  • Embedded Jetty and improved CloudStack management server configuration.
  • Improved support for Java 8 for building artifacts/modules, packaging, and in the systemvm template.
  • New Debian 9 based systemvm template:
    • Patches system VM without reboot, reduces VR/system VM startup time to few tens of seconds.
    • Faster console proxy startup and service availability.
    • Improved support for redundant virtual routers, conntrackd and keepalived.
    • Improved strongswan provided VPN (s2s and remote access).
    • Packer based systemvm template generation and reduced disk size.
    • Several optimization and improvements.

Documentation and Downloads

The official installation, administration and API documentation can be found below:
http://docs.cloudstack.apache.org 

The 4.11.0.0 release notes can be found at:
http://docs.cloudstack.apache.org/projects/cloudstack-release-notes/en/4.11.0.0 

The instruction and links to use ShapeBlue provided (noredist) packages repository can be found at:
https://www.shapeblue.com/packages 

Share:

Related Posts:

Apache CloudStack enables existing VMware users and gives an easy way for service providers to migrate to a fully open-source solution and eliminate vendor dependency.