Graphical console management enhancements

Graphical console management features are extended for both the GUI and CLI experiences.

For GUI, the first and second XCC generations (used in Lenovo ThinkSystem servers through V3 generation) are now given the ability to launch consoles with autorefreshing screenshots:

For CLI, for all XCC generations nodeconsole gains a -s argument that can be used with -t tiling to view remote video consoles right in the terminal:

This functions using the iterm or the kitty graphics protocol. Sixel is also supported without ‘-t’. The default is kitty, use the environment variable ‘CONFLUENT_IMAGE_PROTOCOL’ to select iterm or sixel. The kitty protocol has been tested with kitty, Konsole, and wezterm, with Kitty found to provide the highest quality scaling when scaling images down to fit.

Ubuntu deployment now uses SSL even for initial ISO transfer

Bugs in the Ubuntu initramfs were identified and worked around, to provide secure network transport even for the initial ISO transfer.

The nodefirmware command now has updatestatus

This can help interrogate the state of confluent and target endpoint for update readyness and progress.

nodeping can show original name in output when using substitute names

For example If using nodeping to check bmc connectivity, but wanting to reference the original name in the output.

Fixes for discovery processes for certain Lenovo firmware

Select Lenovo firmware presented some scenarios that required special handling. This has been added.

ESXi 9 deployment has been added

ESXi 9 has been added as a deployable OS

Fix node deployment where the node lacks a firmware UUID

Some systems have not merely a bad UUID, but do not have any at all. This will allow fallback to MAC based for those systems

Improve ESXi network autodetection code

During ESXi deployment, implement multi-interface evaluation in case VMware’s built in logic fails to identify the correct interface.

Improve nodediscover register reliability

When doing a scan, tolerate incorrect responses and continue rather than aborting the scan.

Enhanced Cisco support through use of nxapi

Neighbor and mac data are now fetched through nxapi, when available, for better performance. Further, nodehealth, nodesensors, and such are supported to Cisco Nexus switches.

Improve identity image based deployments of Ubuntu 18.04

The deployment process failed if there were some delays in the link up process

Implemented discovery support for chained SMMv3 configurations

The new N1380 enclosure is now supported for chained configurations in the discovery process.

Implement port descriptions for BMC port selection in configbmc

For example, a port can be described as ‘rj45’ or ‘sfp28’ for systems that have multiple candidates on main board.

Fedora 42 is now implemented as a scripted deployment target

We would have been remiss not to support the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Generate only ed25519 for initramfs sshd

We do not need multiple key formats, and some environments fail security requirements with other host key types.

net parameters for BMCs are now ignored for non-BMC uses

Some used net attributes to track BMC parameters. If trying to build a network configuration the ip addresses are cross-checked against hardwaremanagement.manager, and the network segment is now skipped if a match is found. This should avoid a system being given it’s BMC’s address as the host address during a deployment.

confluent2hosts can now add FQDN before shortname

For /etc/hosts, a lot of scenarios are better with FQDN first. This is now an option for confluent2hosts to honor using ‘-f’

Remote console behavior is improved for Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu variants

For the ‘enterprise linux’ variants, the redundant grub serial output is disabled if firmware serial is detected. This makes the grub menu usable. For Ubuntu, when firmware serial is detected, the gfxterm is now disabled to allow grub to actually work over serial.

confluentdbutil now supports yaml

confluentdbutil can now use yaml as well as json for the dump and restore.

Support multi-interface BMCs for discovery

If a BMC presents multiple NICs during discovery, detect the ‘active’ one and apply the automated onboarding to that interface.

Improvements for confignet bond support

For one, support vlan tags together with bond creation. Another improvement is adding miimon=100 by default to bonds under enterprise linux systems.

Reference nginx configuration provided and improved tolerance for manual reverse proxy configuration

Confluent for the distributions provides support for httpd, as that generally is packaged for the easiest packaged extensibility. However any reverse proxy will do. To help nginx users, sample configurations are now provided in the appropriate place for enterprise linux, though the user must do the manual TLS configuration that ngix requires.

nodeeventlog bug with non-timestamped entries is addressed

Such entries will now be presented as best as possible.

New custom.nodesecret.* attributes

This provides the secret protection to a class of custom attributes, available to a node during deployment by using it’s token. This can be used as a vault to hold credentials the node will need in custom onboarding activity.