Changes for Storage 9.5

Owned by Rumena Zlatkova (Deactivated)
Last updated: Apr 18, 2022 by Kyle Miller (Deactivated)
4 min read

New Features

This release features comprehensive support for SwarmFS 2.0, the protocol connector that makes Swarm Storage accessible from NFS clients, which can mount Swarm domains as drives. In addition, Storage 9.5 includes broad improvements to Swarm operation and maintenance:

Performance and Security

  • Swarm Storage has significantly increased the efficiency of refreshing cluster hardware and retiring whole chassis. The processes for retiring volumes and cleaning up over-replication are optimized. (SWAR-7765)

  • For implementations that deliver content directly over the web, Swarm Storage now provides cluster settings for restricting which headers are returned for GET and HEAD responses, using either a whitelist or blacklist approach. Filtering the response headers best serves those needing to conserve bandwidth (eliminating as many bytes as possible when serving content) and those needing enhanced security (to reveal as little as possible about the content and its context). (SWAR-7695)
    See Filtering Headers.

Query Arguments

  • Swarm allows control of custom headers on PUT and APPEND. PUT only saves new headers, but the preserve argument allows keeping the existing headers as well as save any new ones. APPEND saves the existing headers, but the preserve argument allows modifying the existing headers, and the new argument replace removes existing headers and saves any new ones. (SWAR-7660)
    See SCSP UPDATE and SCSP APPEND.

  • A new query argument, suspendversioning, allows temporary suspension of version creation on POST, PUT, COPY, APPEND, and DELETE requests for versioned objects. It has the effect of updating the current version without adding to the versioning chain. (SWAR-7719)

  • The version query argument may now be used on GET and HEAD requests when the query argument value is the UUID (and ETag) of an immutable object. Although immutable objects cannot be versioned, this change makes usage of the query argument consistent across all object types. (SWAR-7806)

Tracking and Statistics

  • Swarm now keeps track of EC conversions and consolidations that are potentially and actually performed during HP cycles, and it publishes these statistics via SNMP. (SWAR-7715)

  • Deletes of buckets and domain objects have the indirect effect of deleting the contents over time. These deletes are now tracked via the indirectDeletes SNMP entry and in health report summaries. (SWAR-7763)

Metrics and Feeds

  • To minimize the impact of metrics indices on Elasticsearch clusters, Swarm Metrics now has fewer shards in its schemas. After upgrading Metrics, it starts creating the new, improved indices. (SWAR-7769)

  • When a new search feed is first created, any failure to create the Elasticsearch index results in the feed state being red, to make this problem more clear. (SWAR-7666)

  • Swarm now issues fewer status requests to Elasticsearch nodes, reducing network traffic. (9.5.2: SWAR-7907)

Upgrade Impacts

Impacts for 9.5

  • 9.5.2 required for EC — If using erasure coding (EC) with Swarm 9.3.0 or higher, upgrading to 9.5.2 is mandatory. This is to avoid certain situations where reads of EC objects can deliver incorrect bytes to the client. While the stored data remains intact and undamaged in storage, the client receives incorrect information from the read. (9.5.2: SWAR-7940)

  • Upgrading from 9.2.0 or earlier — Because Swarm no longer generates the deprecated header Expect: Content-MD5, rolling upgrades in and remote replication with clusters running 9.2.0 or earlier are not supported. Recommended: Upgrade to 9.3.2 first, then upgrade to the current version. (SWAR-7742)

  • EC and rolling upgrades — Because of changes to EC manifests in 9.4, sites performing EC writes by APPEND and Multipart APPEND (unlikely and rare) should contact DataCore Support before performing a rolling upgrade from a version older than 9.4. Note, too, that the HP may report errors replicating EC manifests during the upgrade, but data integrity is not affected, and the errors stop when the upgrade is complete. (SWAR-7767)

  • Content Gateway 5.2.1+ required — If using Content Gateway, upgrade to version 5.2.1 or greater immediately after upgrading Swarm Storage.

  • Swarm Search and Metrics 5.2+ required — Swarm 9.5 requires an upgrade of Swarm Search and Swarm Metrics, both of which need to be version 2.5+. (SWAR-7818)

Additional Changes

These items are other changes and improvements including those that come from testing and user feedback.

  • OSS updates

    • The Linux Kernel is updated to 4.4.104 and Linux Firmware to 1.170. (SWAR-7813)

    • Intel network drivers are updated to e1000e 3.4.0.2-NAPI, i40e 2.4.3, i40evf 3.4.2, igb 5.3.5.12, ixgbe 5.3.4, and ixgbevf 4.3.2. (SWAR-7810)

    • The mpt3sas/mpt2sas device driver is updated to 15.00.00.00. (SWAR-7882)

    • The mpt3sas device driver now has the prot_mask driver option set to 1 (which is the legacy T10 protection level) to support newer hardware. (9.5.1: SWAR-7936)

    • Driver support is added for Mellanox ConnectX-4 network adapters. (9.5.3: SWAR-8019)

  • Resolved Issues

    • The cache control header If-None-Match cannot be applied to multipart upload initiations and completes. (SWAR-7809)

    • Setting rMemDefault and rMemMax via SNMP had no effect. (SWAR-7766)

    • Resolved the issue that caused Swarm 9.4.0 to have longer than normal boot times. (SWAR-7779)

    • Replication feed performance was sometimes reduced after an upgrade to 9.3.0. (SWAR-7869)

    • Periodic health report production generates log ERROR messages and does not send the report. (SWAR-7780)

    • Listing queries involving the name.lower field provide incorrect results. (SWAR-7745)

    • Feeds become blocked and require DataCore Support assistance to unblock them. (SWAR-7837)

    • Enumerating volumes on a chassis fails in clusters where a volume or chassis had been taken offline. (SWAR-7751)

    • A multipart upload by APPEND loses custom metadata when a key had multiple values, leaving only the last value. (SWAR-7802)

    • Storage UI errors occur due to a chassis or volume being offline. (SWAR-7751)

    • Closed a security vulnerability on port 90, used by the legacy Admin Console. (9.5.2: SWAR-7962)

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