Getting Ready › Release Notes › New in This Release

New in This Release

Version 3.7.14 - May 20, 2013

Note:

• This release is the official CA AppLogic General Availability release and is available immediately to all partners and customers. The current release of CA AppLogic is 3.7.14.
• A video overview of many of the new features is also available. View the video.

This section contains the following topics:

Rebase on CentOS 6.3

CPU Oversubscription

Support for Jumbo Frames

Catalog and Application Updates

Enhanced OS Support: Windows and Linux

Scalability Improvement: 100 Appliances per Server

Web User Interface Improvements

Infrastructure Editor Improvements

Cloud Commons Marketplace - Link from Support Page

Web API Enhancements

Other New Features

Backbone Fabric Controller (BFC) New Features

Documentation Enhancements

Rebase on CentOS 6.3

This release includes a rebase of the following components to CentOS 6.3:

• The underlying dom0 operating system (physical grid nodes)
• Grid controller OS
• Complete catalog of appliances

This enhancement delivers a more stable and robust underlying OS and capitalizes on the wealth of patches since the 5.x release of CentOS. It provides the following improvements:

• Improved stability of underlying OS components
• Updated security patches
• Updated driver support for the following devices:

  Disk Controller

10-Gigabit Ethernet

Gigabit Ethernet

Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps)

CPU Oversubscription

CPU Oversubscription allows you to over-provision or over-commit the CPU resource on a per-grid or per-server basis (configurable by the grid maintainer). For example, you have a four server grid with dual-socket, quad-core processors physically totaling 32 cores (4x2x4). With a two times CPU Oversubscription applied to this grid, there are a total of 64 cores (4x2x4x2) that are available for CA AppLogic applications to use. This allows the scheduler to start more appliances per server than in previous versions of CA AppLogic.

Notes:

• CPU oversubscription removes the guarantee of CPU resource allocation.
• When using CPU Oversubscription, applications should be started in round robin mode.

You can oversubscribe up to four times the physical CPU cores. CPU Oversubscription is supported on both Xen and ESX grids and can be controlled through the command-line, CA AppLogic GUI, and Web Service API.

The dashboard now includes the following resource graph that displays the correct utilization of oversubscribed resources:

Note: For more information, see System Dashboard in the User Interface Reference Guide.

Support for Jumbo Frames

CA AppLogic now supports Jumbo frames for Xen based grids.

Jumbo Frames allow the NIC to transmit larger size packets (9K vs. 1.5K) thus reducing the number of packets required to transfer a given amount of data. Fewer packets per second means fewer interrupts and less load on the computer resources of a server, therefore better performance with a given amount of compute power.

CA AppLogic automatically enables jumbo frames if all servers on your grid have 10Gb hardware. The Grid Maintainer can also optionally enable and disable the feature via the command line, for both 10G and 1G based Xen grids.

Note: If you have a 10G based Xen grid at an earlier version of CA AppLogic, verify your backbone network switch is properly configured to support jumbo frames (MTU of >9000, follow your specific switch documentation) before you start the grid upgrade CA AppLogic 3.7.

Similarly if you plan to create a 10G based Xen grid with CA AppLogic 3.7, verify that your backbone network switch is properly configured to support jumbo frames (MTU of >9000, follow your specific switch documentation) before you start the grid creation.

Important!

If you have a 10G backbone with jumbo frames not enabled or not available on the switches, you must disable jumbo frames when you create the grid using the Add Grid wizard. On the Controller pane of the Add Grid wizard, for Advanced Setting, click Edit to open the Grid Parameters editor. Specify the grid parameter:

jumbo_frames_mode=disable

Do not enable this feature until you are sure your backbone switch is properly configured to support jumbo frames (otherwise grid creation/upgrade will fail).

Note: For more information, see Grid Parameters Reference in the BFC User Guide.

Catalog and Application Updates

The following updates to catalogs and applications are included in the GA release:

CentOS 6.3-based Appliances and Applications

All appliances and applications have been re-based on CentOS 6.3. The underlying OS on the grid servers and controller have also been re-based on CentOS 6.3.

Note: The filer appliances were upgraded to CentOS 6.3 as part of the 3.5 release.

This provides a more stable and robust underlying OS and capitalizes on the wealth of improvements since the 5.x release of CentOS.

Note: For more information, see the Application Catalog Reference Guide.

Improved Support for Multiple External Interfaces (MEI)

New Style Raw Interfaces, also known as MEI or Multiple External Interfaces, was included as a new feature in CA AppLogic 3.5. In this release we have done the following to make this feature easier to use:

• Support for automatically configuring the new style raw interfaces in the APK for custom user appliances running Linux and Windows
• All template applications distributed with 3.7 are now provisioned using new style raw interfaces
• New Style Gateways (IN2, OUT2, NET2, INSSLR2, VPN2) are included in the system catalog

Note: For more information, see System Catalog in the Appliance Catalog Reference Guide.

Emulation of Read-only Volumes for HVM Virtual Machines

HVM virtual machines now support true read-only access to volumes, allowing these volumes to be properly shared for concurrent access. Limited write capability is provided to the guest OS, so that the OS can mount such volumes (each mount point has its own private, limited write area whose content is discarded on appliance stop).

This further allows concurrent provisioning of multiple instances of HVM appliances (e.g., Windows VDS), even when using different target volume size and/or the block-copy-by-filer performance optimization option.

More grids will now be able to use the block-copy-by-filer option which allows more users to be logged in the grid concurrently without sacrificing concurrent provisioning of Windows appliances.

Note: This feature is only supported on Xen - it does not function on ESX.

WEB5 Appliance for Backward Compatibility

The WEB5 appliance from previous releases has been maintained to support backward compatibility.

Note: This appliance will be removed in a future release.

Note: For more information, see System Catalog in the Appliance Catalog Reference Guide.

Enhanced OS Support: Windows and Linux

CA AppLogic now includes support for the following:

Windows

• 7, 8, and Server 2012

Note: ESX only supports Windows 7. Xen supports all Windows versions.

Linux Distros

• CentOS 6.3 (32/64bit)
• Debian 6 (32/64bit)
• Fedora 16/17/18 (32/64bit)
• openSUSE 12.2 (32/64bit)
• RedHat Enterprise Linux 6 (32/64bit)
• SuSE Linux Enterprise 11.1 (32/64bit)
• Ubuntu 12.04/12.10 (32/64bit)

Note: In addition, we provide the application templates and appliance templates for Windows 7, 8 and 2012.

Note: For more information, see the Appliance Developer Guide.

Scalability Improvement: 100 Appliances per Server

CA AppLogic now supports a maximum of 100 appliances per server, up from 60 in previous GA releases.

Note: For ESX-based grids, the maximum number of appliances per server is limited to 70.

Web User Interface Improvements

The following improvements have been made to the web user interface:

Performance Improvements

Web user interface performance has been improved as follows:

• When users initially log in to the Web UI, the grid dashboard page loads 10 times faster than in the previous release.
• Grid controller load has been reduced.
• The Web UI is significantly more responsive when multiple users are using it simultaneously.
• New client side HTML-based rendering in the Editor results in better performance in the Editor, crisper graphics and reduced load on the controller VM.

Note: For more information, see the User Interface Reference Guide.

OVF Import Wizard

This release includes new wizard-based import of virtual machines in OVF format. The import of both Linux and Windows OVF images are supported by this new user interface wizard. In previous versions of CA AppLogic, OVF packages could only be imported using the image2class command.

Users can now create a new class by importing an OVF image using the new Class Creation Wizard. Future releases will support other methods, such as starting from an existing class and branching it, or from an operating system ISO installation image.

The new wizard is used to import an OVF image and to create an unmanaged singleton appliance on a grid. After the Virtual Machine is imported, you can install an APK and make the VM into a managed appliance.

The OVF wizard can be launched from either the Applications tab or from inside the Infrastructure Editor.

Note: For more information, see Class Creation Wizard in the User Interface Reference Guide.

Network List Sorting Improvements

The List of Network Resources in the dashboard can now be sorted by either the “Network” or “VLAN ID” columns.

Previously this sorting was fixed by the “Name” column (which has been re-titled “Network”):

Note: For more information, see the User Interface Reference Guide.

Large Capacity Network List

In previous versions of CA AppLogic there was no way to view a large list of VLANS.

In this release, a scroll bar has been added to the Network Resources section of the dashboard if the list is too large to display in a single page.

Note: For more information, see the User Interface Reference Guide.

Infrastructure Editor Improvements

Editor Zooming

In this release, graphical elements on the infrastructure editor have been enhanced to allow zooming in and out:

Mouse scroll wheel, zoom-to-object, zoom-to-fit, zoom-to-selection and zoom-to-annotation are supported for quicker zoom navigation. This enhancement also improves load times and retains readability when elements are zoomed above the 100% level.

Appliance Progress Indicators

In this release, appliances now show a visual progress indicator while starting and stopping:

Note: For more information, see Canvas in the User Interface Reference Guide.

Cloud Commons Marketplace - Link from Support Page

You can now access the Cloud Commons Marketplace directly from the CA AppLogic Support page:

Note: For more information, see Support in the User Interface Reference Guide.

Web API Enhancements

There is a new enhanced version of the Web API v2 application that adds the following new commands:

Note: For more details regarding the Web API commands and syntax, see the Web Service API Reference Guide.

Other New Features

• Improved performance in “grid info”, “server list” and “app list” operations (incl. CLI commands).
• BFC API enhancements - The BFC APIs have been extended such that they now provide configuration and management of networks, the discovery process and power control of servers.
• If fe code 256 is configured on an appliance, CA AppLogic restarts the appliance if its VM agent disconnects from CA AppLogic.
• CA AppLogic can now detect the size of a SAN dynamically during runtime (i.e., when a SAN is attached to a grid). In previous releases, CA AppLogic only detected the SAN size upon server boot, so if it changed afterwards CA AppLogic would not account for it.
• CA AppLogic can now detect whether STP is incorrectly enabled on the backbone network for Xen-based grids (this is not supported for ESX-based grids). If STP is detected on the backbone, a dashboard message is displayed to the grid’s dashboard.
• Mandatory attribute for interfaces is now supported. Mandatory means the interface must be connected in order for the appliance to start correctly. If not connected the parent application will fail to start.
• Auto completion of ssh command in CLI. Auto completion is now available for all running components in the current application.
• Hyper threading is detected and reported as enabled/disabled via “server info” and “grid info”.
• Added a Grid Actions button to the Grid Properties page in BFC so that actions can be performed conveniently from that page rather than having to return to the grid list.
• Added a User Actions button to the User Properties page in BFC so that actions can be performed conveniently from that page rather than having to return to the user list.