Changes in Swarm Cluster Installer (SCI) 2.8

Improvements

This release features the following improvements:

• Includes Swarm Storage 16.0 and Content Gateway 8.0

• A new golden template VM is used with VMX-19 VMware compatibility for ESX 7.0U2 and above.

• The golden template was updated with the latest CentOS 7.9 packages and open-vm-tools. 

• The golden template is 50% smaller than SCI-2.6 and has 100Gb thin provisioned disk with a dedicated 75GB log partition.

• All deployed VM’s use thin provisioning. (SCI-302)

• We tested deployment against VMware vCenter 8.0U2 with and without DRS. (SCI-295)

• The Telemetry server has pre-provisioned read/write dashboards and has it's home dashboard set to the “Swarm system monitor” dashboard. (SCI-297)

• The Telemetry server auto deploys and configures the new elasticsearch_exporter service, the old plugin based system is obsolete.

• The Telemetry server alert rules have been updated to the latest. (SCI-290)

• The Elasticsearch nodes are now running 7.17.14 and heap configuration is now automatic even if you change the VM memory after deployment. (SCI-286)

• The Gateway installs haproxy 1.8.24 but leaves it unconfigured for optional use in the field. (SCI-270)

• Multicast=true will now be used by default in SCI 2.8.0. (which is the default in SCS 1.6.0).

• Datastore and Network list are now sorted alphabetically in the pre-installer. (SCI-300)

• Default internal storage network of SCI has changed to 172.29.0.0/24.

• A bug preventing kernel arguments to be added to a network_boot group has been fixed. (SCI-287)

• metrics.nodeFreqReporting is now set to 120s instead of the previous too low value of 60s. (SCI-237)

• The GUI will no longer allow the character “_” for hostnames. (SCI-201)

• SCI now supports “DOMAIN\username” usernames, this has been tested on vCenter8 with identity source set to “AD over LDAP” on a Windows 2019 Server. (SCI-254)

• SCI now supports all special characters except double quote in a vCenter password. (SCI-296)

• SCI will now use the user provided hostname as a VM name, with the exception of the clone template. (SCI-312)

• The Clone template has been renamed from scsn-temp-<templateID> to datacore-sci-template-<templateID>, this VM can be shutdown and removed after the installation has successfully completed. (SCI-312)

• The datacore_scsinstaller rpm is removed on Elasticsearch/Gateway/Telemetry VMs. (SCI-316 and SCI-318)

• Telemetry VM ansible-playbook will no longer fail if users provide a non-admin username. (SCI-313)

• Docker service on the Gateway is disabled by default. (SCI-319)

• For security reasons, once the SCI installation is completed, swarm-nodejs service on SCS is disabled. This requires a reboot to activate the changes. (SCI-299)

Limitations

This release has the following limitations:

• Configuration is editable after deployment, but it is not supported. 

• The Upgrade mode is currently not supported and has been removed.

• vCenter 7/8 credentials, vCenter infrastructure details, and Swarm Installer package is required to install and deploy SCI 2.8. (We tested in our labs on vCenter 7.0U2 and v8.0U2) (SCI-295)

• vCenter password does not currently support a double quote special character. (SCI-314)

• Does not work with distributed switches. (SCI-283) , which means you need to have DRS set to manual for SCI deployments to work.

• The datastore and network list are still showing all known resources in the vCenter cluster rather than the selected ESX host. This is due to missing vCenter REST API filter functionality. (SCI-281)

• After deployment, you will see a deactivated cni-podman0 network adapter on the Elasticsearch, gateway and telemetry VMs those are harmless and will disappear on the next reboot.

• SCI deployment leaves behind a running datacore-sci-template-xxx VM which was used for VM cloning, this can be stopped and deleted after the installation has been completed.

• The admin username for Grafana is “admin” and the password will be the one you provided during installation. You can still make new admin accounts via the grafana GUI after the installation is completed.

Changes in Swarm Cluster Installer (SCI) 2.7

Improvements

This release features the following improvements:

• Includes Swarm Storage 16.0 and Content Gateway 8.0

• A new golden template VM is used with VMX-19 VMware compatibility for ESX 7.0U2 and above.

• The golden template was updated with the latest CentOS 7.9 packages and open-vm-tools. 

• The golden Template has 100Gb thin provisioned disk with a dedicated 75GB log partition.

• The golden Template is 50% smaller than SCI-2.6 (Currently 2GB).

• All provisioned VM’s use thin provisioned. (SCI-302)

• A new special script was added to golden template to handle missing SCS 1.4.0 functionality, this script is called internal_update_network and is called by the swarm_maininstaller tomcat webapp. 

• The pre_installer and swarm_maininstaller received fixes for several grammar and typo errors. 

• We tested deployment against VMware vCenter 8.0U2 without DRS as well as with a Cluster and DRS enabled. (SCI-295)

• The Telemetry server has pre-provisioned read/write dashboards and has its home dashboard activated so you see the swarm system monitor dashboard as soon as you login. (SCI-297)

• The Telemetry server auto deploys and configures the new elasticsearch_exporter service, the old plugin based system is obsolete. 

• The Telemetry server alert rules have been updated to the latest. (SCI-290)

• The Elasticsearch nodes are now running 7.17.9 and heap configuration is now automatic even if you change the VM memory after deployment. (SCI-286)

• The Gateway installs haproxy 1.8.24 but leaves it unconfigured for optional use in the field. (SCI-270)

• SCI 2.7 will now use by default multicast=true (which is the default in SCS 1.6.0).

• Datastore and Network list are now sorted alphabetically in the pre-installer. (SCI-300)

• Default internal storage network of SCI is now 172.29.0.0/24.

• A bug preventing kernel arguments to be added to a network_boot group has been fixed. (SCI-287)

• metrics.nodeFreqReporting is now set to 120s instead of the previous too low value of 60s. (SCI-237)

• The GUI will no longer allow the character “_” for hostnames. (SCI-201)

• SCI now supports “domain\username” vCenter usernames, this has been tested on vCenter8 with identity source set to “AD over LDAP” on Windows 2019 Server. (SCI-254)

• SCI now supports the “\” special character in vCenter passwords. (SCI-296)

• SCI will now use the user provided hostname as VM name, with the exception of the clone template. (SCI-312)

• Clone template has been renamed from scsn-temp-<templateID> to datacore-sci-template-<templateID> , this VM can be shutdown and removed after the installation has successfully completed. (SCI-312)

• For security reasons, once the SCI installation has been completed, ssh to the SCS VM and execute the following command: (SCI-299)

  systemctl stop swarm-nodejs systemctl disable swarm-nodejs

Limitations

This release has the following limitations:

• Telemetry VM will fail to deploy if you use another admin username than “admin”, but because it is the last step in the install , the Telemetry server is up and running, we will fix this bug in SCI 2.8.0

• Configuration is editable after deployment, but it is not supported. 

• The Upgrade mode is currently not supported and has been removed.

• vCenter 7/8 credentials, vCenter infrastructure details, and Swarm Installer package is required to install and deploy SCI 2.7. (We tested in our labs on vCenter 7.0U2 and v8.0U2) (SCI-295)

• vCenter password does not currently support a double quote special character. (SCI-314)

• Does not work with distributed switches. (SCI-283)

• The datastore and network list is still showing all known resources in the vCenter cluster rather than the selected ESX host. This is due to missing vCenter REST API filter functionality. (SCI-281)

• After deployment you will see a deactivated cni-podman0 network adapter on the Elasticsearch, gateway and telemetry VM’s those are harmless and will disappear on the next reboot.

• SCI deployment leaves behind a running datacore-sci-template-xxx VM which was used for VM cloning, this can be stopped and deleted after the installation has completed.

• The admin username for Grafana is “admin” and the password will be the one you provided during installation. You can still make new admin accounts via the grafana GUI after the installation is completed.