MAAS 2.4.0 beta 1 released

[Andres Rodriguez]

Hello MAASters!

I'm happy to announce that MAAS 2.4.0 beta 1 is now released and is
available for Ubuntu Bionic.

*MAAS Availability*
MAAS 2.4.0 beta 1 is currently available in Bionic -proposed waiting to be
published into Ubuntu, or in the following PPA:

*ppa:maas/next*
MAAS 2.4.0 (beta1)Important announcementsDebian package maas-dns no longer
needed

The Debian package ‘maas-dns’ has now been made a transitional package.
This package provided some post-installation configuration to prepare bind
to be managed by MAAS, but it required maas-region-api to be installed
first.

In order to streamline the installation and make it easier for users to
install HA environments, the configuration of bind has now been integrated
to the ‘maas-region-api’ package itself, which and we have made ‘maas-dns’
a dummy transitional package that can now be removed.
New Features & ImprovementsMAAS Internals optimization

Major internal surgery to MAAS 2.4 continues improve various areas not
visible to the user. These updates will advance the overall performance of
MAAS in larger environments. These improvements include:


   -

   Database query optimizations

Further reductions in the number of database queries, significantly cutting
the queries made by the boot source cache image import process from over
100 to just under 5.


   -

   UI optimizations

MAAS is being optimized to reduce the amount of data using the websocket
API to render the UI. This is targeted at only processing data only for
viewable information, improving various legacy areas. Currently, the work
done for this release includes:

   -

   Only load historic script results (e.g. old commissioning/testing
   results) when requested / accessed by the user, instead of always making
   them available over the websocket.
   -

   Only load node objects in listing pages when the specific object type is
   requested. For instance, only load machines when accessing the machines tab
   instead of also loading devices and controllers.
   -

   Change the UI mechanism to only request OS Information only on initial
   page load rather than every 10 seconds.

KVM pod improvements

Continuing with the improvements from alpha 2, this new release provides
more updates to KVM pods:


   -

   Added overcommit ratios for CPU and memory.

When composing or allocating machines, previous versions of MAAS would
allow the user to request as many resources as the user wanted regardless
of the available resources. This created issues when dynamically allocating
machines as it could allow users to create an infinite number of machines
even when the physical host was already over committed. Adding this feature
allows administrators to control the amount of resources they want to over
commit.


   -

   Added ability to filter which pods or pod types to avoid when allocating
   machines

Provides users with the ability to select which pods or pod types not to
allocate resources from. This makes it particularly useful when dynamically
allocating machines when MAAS has a large number of pods.
DNS UI Improvements

MAAS 2.0 introduced the ability to manage DNS, not only to allow the
creation of new domains, but also to the creation of resources records such
as A, AAA, CNAME, etc. However, most of this functionality has only been
available over the API, as the UI only allowed to add and remove new
domains.

As of 2.4, MAAS now adds the ability to manage not only DNS domains but
also the following resource records:


   -

   Added ability to edit domains (e.g. TTL, name, authoritative).
   -

   Added ability to create and delete resource records (A, AAA, CNAME, TXT,
   etc).
   -

   Added ability to edit resource records.

Navigation UI improvements

MAAS 2.4 beta 1 is changing the top-level navigation:


   -

   Rename ‘Zones’ for ‘AZs’
   -

   Add ‘Machines, Devices, Controllers’ to the top-level navigation instead
   of ‘Hardware’.

Minor improvements

A few notable improvements being made available in MAAS 2.4 include:


   -

   Add ability to force the boot type for IPMI machines.

Hardware manufactures have been upgrading their BMC firmware versions to be
more compliant with the Intel IPMI 2.0 spec. Unfortunately, the IPMI 2.0
spec has made changes that provide a non-backward compatible user
experience. For example, if the administrator configures their machine to
always PXE boot over EFI, and the user executed an IPMI command without
specifying the boot type, the machine would use the value of the configured
BIOS. However, with  these new changes, the user is required to always
specify a boot type, avoiding a fallback to the BIOS.

As such, MAAS now allows the selection of a boot type (auto, legacy, efi)
to force the machine to always PXE with the desired type (on the next boot
only) .


   -

   Add ability, via the API, to skip the BMC configuration on commissioning.

Provides an API option to skip the BMC auto configuration during
commissioning for IPMI systems. This option helps admins keep credentials
provided over the API when adding new nodes.
Bug fixes

Please refer to the following for all 32 bug fixes in this release.

https://launchpad.net/maas/+milestone/2.4.0beta1


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