MAAS 2.2 Beta 3 Released

[Andres Rodriguez]

The MAAS team is happy to announce that the new upstream (development)
release has now been released.

*Availability*
MAAS 2.2.0 Beta 3  is currently available in:

*ppa:maas/next*

Release notes
Important announcements

Hardware tests - running by default during Commissioning

MAAS 2.2 introduces the ability to perform hardware tests. As part of MAAS
beta 3, MAAS introduces the ability to run disk tests, which can be run as
part of the commissioning processes, or as a separate action from Ready or
Deployed.

Please be aware that running hardware tests during the commissioning
process can prevent machines from becoming ‘Ready’ for deployment, if the
hardware tests fail.

For more information about the Hardware Testing feature please refer to the
following section.

Intel Rack Scale Design - Dynamically creating machines

MAAS 2.2 Beta 2 introduced support for Intel’s Rack Scale Design (RSD). RSD
is a hardware architecture that allows the dynamic composition of physical
systems from a pool of available hardware resources.

Starting from Beta 3, MAAS now extends its support for RSD allowing the
creation (composition) of machines dynamically. This allows administrators
and users to request a machine (allocate) not previously available to MAAS,
and dynamically create (compose) one within the RSD system. This machine
can then be deployed.

Adding such support, it allows juju to deploy workloads against a MAAS that
has an RSD Pod, with no previously known (available - Ready) machines.
New features

Hardware Testing

Starting from MAAS, MAAS provides the ability to perform specific hardware
tests. The hardware testing feature provides administrators with a
predefined set of tests that can be run to ensure correct operation of
their hardware before making it available for usage. The hardware testing
feature will include Disk, CPU and Memory tests.

As of MAAS 2.2 Beta 3, only Disk hardware tests have been made available:


   -

   Disk status - The Disk Status test (smartctl-validate) uses the smartctl
   tool to verify existing SMART data on all drives has not detected any
   errors.



   -

   Disk Integrity - MAAS provides the ability to run SMART tests. This
   includes:



   -

   smartctl-short & smartctl-long

Runs the SMART self tests to validate health on all disks. It provides a
long running and a short running test.


   -

   Smartctl-conveyance

Runs the conveyance SMART self tests to validate health on all disks.


   -

   Memory - For memory, MAAS provides the following tests:
   -

      Memtestr

Runs memtester over all available RAM.


   -

   Stress-ng

Runs the Stress-NG tests over 12 hours against RAM.

NOTE: Please note that these are long running tests and will take hours to
complete.


   -

   CPU - CPU tests include Stress-NG stress tests over 12 hours.


Intel RSD - Dynamic Composition

The dynamic composition feature allows administrators to request (allocate)
machines from an Intel RSD without having to manually compose such machine.
This allows modeling tools, such as juju, to request a machine from MAAS
when there are no previously known machines, and dynamically create and
deploy one for a specific workload.

Administrators not using Juju can request a machine via the API, and if no
other machine satisfies the specific or default constraints, a machine will
be automatically created from an RSD pod if one available.

Web UI - MAAS Pods & Intel RSD

The MAAS Web UI introduces a new ‘Pods’ tab. This new Pods tab is where
MAAS will list composable hardware systems like the Intel RSD.  MAAS 2.2
Beta 2 introduce the ability for MAAS to add and control an Intel RSD via
the MAAS API/CLI. MAAS 2.2 Beta 3 introduces a basic Web UI feature to
support and manage the Intel RSD Pods (and any other composable hardware).
This changes include:


   -

   List Pods - lists all available pods under the ‘Pods’ tab:
   -

      This provides the ability to list all available pods and provide a
      summary of the usage statistics fo such pod.
      -

   Add Pod - ability to add new Pods from the ‘Pods’ tab.
   -

   Pod Details Page - provides more detailed information about a pod:
   -

      This page provides the ability to obtain more detail information of a
      particular pod. At the moment, it will provide information about the
      available and used resources.


Facebook Wedge 40 & Wedge 100 discovery

MAAS now has the ability to automatically discover and manage the Facebook
Wedge 40 and Wedge 100 switches. This allows MAAS to automatically discover
the Switch BMC and power manage as any other servers, in order to deploy
Ubuntu onto the switches. MAAS will also automatically tag the machine to
easily identify it.

Additionally, MAAS will automatically identify if the Trident or Tomahawk
ASICs are connected to the switch, and will automatically identify them via
tags.

Web UI - Device Details Page
Starting from Beta 3, MAAS 2.2 now provides a Details Page for ‘Devices’,
allowing administrators to both, add new interfaces to a device, or
modifying the existing interfaces.

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