MAAS 2.3.0 Alpha 1 Released!

[Andres Rodriguez]

Dear All!

I'm happy to announce that MAAS 2.3.0 Alpha 1 has now been released and it
is currently available in Ubuntu Artful, PPA and as a snap.

*PPA Availability*
For those running Ubuntu Xenial and would like to use Alpha 1, please use
the following PPA.

*ppa:maas/next*

*Snap Availability*
Alpha 1 is currently available in the Edge channel on the default track.


MAAS 2.3.0 (alpha1)
Important announcementsMachine Network configuration now deferred to
cloud-init.

The machine network configuration is now deferred to cloud-init. In
previous MAAS (and curtin) releases, the machine network configuration was
performed by curtin during the installation process. In an effort to
consolidate and improve robustness, network configuration has now been
consolidated in cloud-init.

Since MAAS 2.3 now depends on the latest version of curtin, the network
configuration is now deferred to cloud-init. As such, while MAAS will
continue to send the network configuration to curtin for backwards
compatibility, curtin itself will defer the network configuration to
cloud-init. Cloud-init will then perform such configuration on first boot
after the installation process has completed.

Ephemeral Images over HTTP

In the effort to reduce the amount of dependencies and improve MAAS’
robustness, MAAS ephemeral images are no longer loaded via iSCSI (tgt).
Starting from 2.3, the ephemeral images are obtained via HTTP from the Rack
Controller.

Please ensure you have the latest available images. For more information
please refer to the section below in New Features & Improvements.
New Features & ImprovementsDjango 1.11 support

MAAS 2.3 now supports the latest Django LTS version, Django 1.11. This
allows MAAS to work with the newer Django version in Ubuntu Artful, which
serves as a preparation for the next Ubuntu LTS release.


   -

   Users running MAAS from the snap in any Ubuntu release will use Django
   1.11.
   -

   Users running MAAS in Ubuntu Artful will use Django 1.11.
   -

   Users running MAAS in Ubuntu Xenial will continue to use Django 1.9.

Upstream Proxy

MAAS 2.3 now supports the ability to use an upstream proxy. Doing so,
provides greater flexibility for closed environments provided that:


   -

   It allows MAAS itself to use the corporate proxy at the same time as
   allowing machines to continue to use the MAAS proxy.
   -

   It allows machines that don’t have access to the corporate proxy, to
   have access to other pieces of the infrastructure via MAAS’ proxy.


Adding upstream proxy support als includes an improved configuration on the
settings page. Please refer to Settings > Proxy for more details.
Fabric deduplication and beaconing

MAAS 2.3 will introduce network beaconing, to confirm network connectivity
and aide discovery of VLANs and fabrics. MAAS now listens for unicast and
multicast beacons on UDP port 5240, and will reply to received beacons. To
prepare for beaconing, several improvements to fabric discovery and
creation have been completed. (For example, MAAS 2.3 alpha 1 should no
longer create empty fabrics when a rack controller is initially registered.)
Ephemeral Images over HTTP (feature flag)

Historically, MAAS has used ‘tgt’ to provide images over iSCSI for the
ephemeral environments (e.g commissioning, deployment environment, rescue
mode, etc). MAAS 2.3 will change that behavior in favor of loading images
via HTTP. The change means that the initrd loaded on PXE will contact the
Rack Controller to download the image to load in the ephemeral environment.
Due to these changes, ‘tgt’ will be dropped as a dependency completely once
2.3 is final.

MAAS 2.3 Alpha 1 includes this feature behind a feature flag. While the
feature is enabled by default, users experiencing issues who would want to
go back to use 'tgt' can do so by turning of the feature flag:

  maas <user> maas set-config name=http_boot value=False

Issues fixed in this release
For all the issues fixed in this release, please refer to:

https://launchpad.net/maas/+milestone/2.3.0alpha1

-- 
Andres Rodriguez
Engineering Manager, MAAS
Canonical USA, Inc.
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