We are pleased to announce the availability of Lightbits v3.18.2, the latest update on our Long-Term Support (LTS) stream. This release reinforces the 3.18.x LTS line as a stable, extensively validated foundation, while bringing SSD journaling to the LTS stream for the first time (already proven across earlier STS releases), introducing in-band authentication, and delivering meaningful improvements to trim-based capacity reclamation along with a broad set of resiliency and monitoring enhancements. As a leader in high-performance software-defined storage built on NVMe over TCP block storage, Lightbits continues to deliver a modern, efficient, and scalable data platform for demanding AI inference, cloud service providers, e-commerce, financial, and enterprise workloads.
LTS: Stability You Can Plan Around
Lightbits v3.18.2 is an LTS release, and that distinction matters. Both our LTS and Standard-Term Support (STS) streams are production-ready; the difference is in cadence and lifecycle, not in readiness. The LTS stream goes through additional stages of validation and performance testing, arrives on a deliberately slower cadence, and is backed by extended maintenance and support timeframes. It is intended for environments that do not require the bleeding-edge features and that prefer longer, less frequent upgrade and maintenance cycles. The STS stream, equally production-grade, delivers the newest capabilities sooner on a faster cadence.
If you are deciding which stream best fits your environment, we recommend reading Choosing the Right Lightbits Release: LTS vs STS Streams. In short: choose LTS when you prefer fewer, more extensively validated updates and longer maintenance and support windows; choose STS when you want the newest capabilities sooner on a faster cadence. The v3.18.2 update continues to strengthen that LTS foundation rather than change it under the hood, which is exactly what an LTS update should do.
Resilient SSD Journaling
SSD journaling is the modern, hardware-independent persistence architecture at the heart of LightOS®, recording writes to a low-latency journal on standard SSDs before acknowledgment, thereby preserving in-flight data through power interruptions. With v3.18.2, this capability—already proven across earlier STS releases—arrives on the LTS stream for the first time, and it does so with additional resiliency hardening.
The Node Manager now reliably keeps data and journal devices distinct and cleanly heals after a journal device failure. On dual-node servers, it affects only the instance on the affected node, so the rest of the server continues serving I/O without interruption. Journal device telemetry is also more dependable, giving operators an accurate, trustworthy view of journaling behavior.
Trim Enhancements
As a reminder, the 3.18.x LTS line carries forward the enhanced Trim support first delivered in v3.16.1, which improved the NVMe deallocate implementation to reclaim freed capacity more efficiently. The result is tighter capacity utilization and more predictable provisioning over the long lifetime of an LTS deployment.
Resiliency and Reliability
Consistent with the LTS philosophy, much of v3.18.2 is targeted resiliency work that helps an already robust platform remain dependable and recover gracefully under rare, adverse conditions. The cluster now keeps the protection state consistent through transient network or etcd interruptions, preserves memory stability through Cluster Manager failovers, and recovers reliably on node startup, even when placement-group membership has changed while a node was offline. Snapshot and migration handling is more tolerant; shutdown is faster and cleaner; encryption key rotation rides through a coinciding failover without disrupting the data path; and further hardening keeps device add, NVMe state, and concurrent recovery operations smooth at the edges. Detailed descriptions of each improvement are available in the v3.18.2 release notes.
Richer Monitoring and Observability
v3.18.2 expands operational visibility so teams can see and act on cluster state sooner. New Grafana panels surface unconnected nodes and connectivity-impacted hosts at a glance and events and telemetry are clearer, with accurate server-disable events and quieter, fully documented collector metrics. Full details are in the v3.18.2 release notes.
Encrypted Clones from Unencrypted Base Snapshots
v3.18.2 backports the ability to create encrypted clones from unencrypted base snapshots, with each derived volume using its own unique key (on clusters configured with encryption). This is especially valuable in multi-tenant environments where a provider maintains shared, unencrypted golden images and needs to provision tenant-isolated, individually encrypted volumes without encrypting the base image itself. See the documentation for details, specifically the –unencrypted flag for volume creation.
Modernizing the Platform Foundation (RHEL 8 and DCPMM)
As Lightbits continues to evolve toward a standardized, modern platform foundation, v3.18 marks an important planning milestone for two legacy dependencies: Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory (DCPMM) and the RHEL 8 operating system family.
Why are we making this change? Lightbits originally relied on DCPMM as a high-performance persistence mechanism that protected in-flight writes and kept data crash-consistent across power loss. Intel has since discontinued the Optane product line and no longer manufactures or supports DCPMM, which means the hardware can no longer be reliably sourced, expanded, or replaced over the long term. In response, we developed SSD journaling as the modern, hardware-independent replacement: it records writes to a dedicated, low-latency journal on standard SSDs before they are acknowledged, so that no in-flight data is lost if power is interrupted, and the journal is replayed on reboot to commit any pending writes. This delivers the same crash-consistency and power-loss protection that DCPMM provided, with no dependency on specialized or discontinued memory hardware. SSD journaling is now generally available and is the recommended persistence architecture going forward. In parallel, the RHEL 8 family (RHEL 8, AlmaLinux 8, Rocky Linux 8) is entering the later stages of its Red Hat lifecycle, and our platform vision is to standardize on the modern Red Hat ecosystem (RHEL 9 today and the RHEL 10 family going forward) so that every deployment runs on a current, fully supported, and actively maintained operating system.
What does this mean for future releases? The 3.18.x LTS line is the last to support the RHEL 8 family and DCPMM. Customers can continue to deploy new clusters or upgrade existing clusters to 3.18.x on these configurations with full support. Subsequent release lines, beginning with 3.20.2, will no longer support RHEL 8 or DCPMM. To move beyond 3.18.x, clusters will need to be on a newer operating system (RHEL 9 today, or the RHEL 10 family going forward) and consider SSD journaling as the persistency mechanism to replace DCPMM. We understand that some environments need a longer runway to complete this transition, and the 3.18.x maintenance and support period can be extended on a per-customer basis to assist customers through the change.
We are sharing this early, and well in advance, so that migrations can be planned calmly and on your own timeline. The transition from DCPMM to SSD journaling can be performed using the gradual, controlled migration path introduced in this release. We encourage you to book time to talk with an expert to map out the path that best fits your environment.
Note on the STS stream: v3.19.1 was the last version to support the RHEL 8 family and DCPMM; the upcoming v3.20.1 (STS) will no longer support them. This mirrors the LTS stream, where v3.18.x is the last LTS line to support these configurations.
Looking Ahead
Lightbits v3.18.2 continues our commitment to delivering modern, efficient, and secure storage for performance-sensitive workloads across cloud, virtualization, AI infrastructure, and enterprise platforms, while keeping the LTS line stable and dependable for the long term.
For full details, please refer to the v3.18.2 release notes and book time to talk with an expert if you would like guidance on SSD journaling, planning a migration from DCPMM, or choosing between the LTS and STS streams. You can also experience Lightbits software at your own pace by requesting a Free Trial.
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