On July 25, 2022, ZStack Cloud officially released its latest version, ZStack Cloud 4.4.24, covering a number of important features described in detail below.

Overview of new features in ZStack Cloud 4.4.24

1. One-click Inspection
2. VM Instances Support Memory Snapshots
3. Elastic Baremetal Management Enhancement
   • NIC bond can be configured from the UI for elastic baremetal instances
   • Shared volumes can be attached to elastic baremetal instances
   • Agent version of elastic baremetal instances can be detected automatically
   • Real-time progress can be displayed for local deployment of elastic baremetal instances
   • Hardware information can be obtained for baremetal nodes via bulk action
4. Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Enhancement
   • CDP backup is enhanced
   • Heavy I/O scenario is enhanced
   • Data display in case of timeline latency is optimized
5. Enhancement of Important Alarm and Log Display
   • Important resource alarms are displayed as a global alert banner
   • Auto-scheduling logs are newly included in operation logs
   • Alarm messages are displayed on the details page of core resources
6. VM Instances Support Online Change of IP Addresses
7. VPC vRouter Enhancement
   • Primary storages can be manually specified when creating VPC vRouters
   • Hot migration across primary storages is supported for VPC vRouters
8. One Cluster Supports both LocalStorage and Ceph Primary Storages
9. VM Creation Optimization for Volumes
   • Root disk offering can be selected when creating VM instances from qcow2/raw images
   • Data volumes can be attached in batches when creating VM instances
10. Linux VM Instances Support Time Synchronization
11. Support for NVIDIA A-Series GPU Virtualization
12. Other Features and Improvements

The One-click Inspection feature is now available in ZStack Cloud 4.4.24. This feature can comprehensively inspect the health status of key resources and services of the Cloud and score their healthiness based on inspection results. It also provides O&M suggestions and inspection reports to ensure high O&M efficiency.

The One-click Inspection feature provides five inspection categories, including platform, compute, network, storage, and global setting. With dozens of inspection items in total, this feature covers all key resources and services of the Cloud, and you are allowed to select inspection items based on your business scenarios.

The health score, inspection results, and suggestions are given right after the inspection finishes.

One-click Inspection is equipped with an in-built and multi-layered healthiness scoring mechanism for the Cloud resources and services. It quantifies the health status of inspection items, and allows you to grasp the overall running status of the Cloud in a visualized way. Inspection results can be classified into four types, namely normal, warning, fault, and failed. For inspection results such as warning and fault, suggestions will be offered for further investigation and troubleshooting.

One-click Inspection allows you to export PDF-formatted inspection reports, consisting of introduction, summary, and inspection result. For items found to be abnormal, inspection details and corresponding O&M suggestions will be provided accordingly.

In versions earlier than ZStack Cloud 4.4.24, snapshots could only be created for root volumes and data volumes of VM instances, as a way to facilitate quick rollback during breakdowns.

In ZStack Cloud 4.4.24, you can create snapshots for the memory of VM instances to record their memory state and information. This enhances the snapshot feature and further ensures the data integrity. In addition, you can revert a memory snapshot as a snapshot group.

In ZStack Cloud 4.4.24, the improvements for Elastic Baremetal Management are as follows.

NIC bond can be configured from the UI for elastic baremetal instances

From ZStack Cloud 4.4.24, you can attach a NIC bond for an elastic baremetal instance from the UI with both active-backup and LACP modes supported. NIC bonds will significantly enhance the reliability of service network and improve network performance.

Shared volumes can be attached to elastic baremetal instances

In versions earlier, you can attach classic volumes to elastic baremetal instances already, while ZStack Cloud 4.4.24 allows you to attach shared volumes to achieve high availability in core business of databases, failover clusters, and other scenarios.

Compared with classic volumes, shared volumes have characteristics of high concurrency, high reliability, and multiple mount points. With the stable and powerful computing power of dedicated hosts, the high availability and stability of elastic baremetal instances can be significantly enhanced for business when shared volumes are attached.

Currently, the creation of shared volumes is supported for SharedBlock and Ceph storage scenarios. You can attach shared volumes to both elastic baremetal instances and VM instances, so the storage space can be shared by both instances at the same time.

Agent version of elastic baremetal instances can be detected automatically

If an agent has been installed for an elastic baremetal instance, its version can be detected automatically. Once the agent version is detected to be too old, the UI will give a warning sign promptly and provide corresponding upgrade methods.

Real-time progress can be displayed for local deployment of elastic baremetal instances

When elastic baremetal instances are deployed through a local disk, a progress bar will be displayed to help you track the deployment progress in real-time.

Hardware information can be obtained for baremetal nodes via bulk action

After adding baremetal nodes to the Cloud in batches, you can obtain all hardware information of baremetal nodes via Bulk Action, which improves the deployment and O&M efficiency.