We’re excited to unveil the latest enhancements in Lightbits v3.7.1, launched on February 28th, 2024. This release is packed with a lot of enhancements across various aspects of our platform, aimed at providing you with a smoother and more efficient storage experience for private cloud and public cloud environments.
Azure Level Up: Expanded Capabilities for Lightbits Clusters
In this latest release, we introduce significant enhancements specifically tailored to our Azure users. These updates are designed to elevate Lightbits’ storage experience on the Azure platform, providing users with greater flexibility, resilience, and scalability with our managed application offering.
- Expanded Region Support: We’re excited to announce that Lightbits now supports additional Azure regions, further expanding the reach of our storage solution. This expansion not only increases availability but also enables Cross Availability Zone deployment, enhancing solution reliability and supporting two or three replica-based deployments on Azure to reduce overall Total Cost of Ownership. Explore the full list of supported regions and deployment options in our documentation here.
- Auto Healing for Increased Reliability: With the new auto-healing feature, Lightbits clusters on Azure can now automatically recover from abrupt instance terminations. Say goodbye to unexpected downtime, as your storage infrastructure seamlessly restores itself to full functionality without any manual intervention, ensuring uninterrupted service delivery.
- Automatic Scale-Out for Seamless Growth: Experience unparalleled scalability with the automatic scale-out capability for Lightbits clusters on Azure. As your storage requirements fluctuate, additional nodes are provisioned automatically enabling cluster elasticity in response to demand. This capability ensures optimal application performance for the best user experience. It also ensures optimal resource utilization at all times which simplifies management and lowers cloud storage costs.
- Azure VMware Solution Enhancements: Lightbits v3.7.1 brings many enhancements to Azure VMware Solution (AVS) users for provisioning and managing Lightbits storage in AVS environments. These updates include multi-AZ support for increased resilience, a new command for streamlined cluster management, flexible datastore resizing capabilities, simplified compression configuration, optimized naming conventions, customizable cluster configurations, and enhanced data protection with default 3x replicas for VMFS datastores. These improvements collectively empower users with greater flexibility, efficiency, and control over their storage operations within the AVS environment, ensuring seamless integration and optimal performance for their workloads.
Lightbits CSI Driver for Kubernetes:
Our Lightbits CSI (Container Storage Interface) driver has been added to the official CNCF CSI drivers list. This highlights our commitment to compatibility and interoperability within Kubernetes environments. Lightbits CSI plugin can be used to provision persistent volumes for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), offering enhanced flexibility and efficiency in managing high-performance storage resources. Check out our CSI driver list here for more details.
Proactive Node Evacuation:
Proactive node evacuation is available for private preview. This feature is designed to safeguard your data during server maintenance or when disabling operations. With user-triggered data eviction, all resources associated with a server, including volumes and snapshots, are seamlessly migrated to other servers within the cluster. This proactive approach ensures that volumes and snapshot data are fully protected before any maintenance operation occurs. Users have the flexibility to initiate the eviction process at their convenience, eliminating the need to wait for predefined thresholds or expiration times. This empowers users and automation frameworks with greater control over their data management and system maintenance processes.
Other Technical Enhancements:
In addition to the notable features highlighted above, Lightbits v3.7.1 includes various technical enhancements aimed at improving system reliability and user experience:
- Event Notifications:
- New events were added for server creation and deletion, providing enhanced visibility into system changes.
- Flexible Server Deletion:
- Introduction of an optional “force delete” flag for server deletion, allowing users to override certain checks and streamline the deletion process.
- Cluster Health Monitoring:
- Expansion of the cluster health API to include the number of healthy volumes, alongside degraded, read-only, and unavailable volumes, for comprehensive system monitoring.
- Dynamic Server Configuration:
- Introduction of a new “extend-cluster” flag for server creation, enabling immediate activation of new server nodes for volume provisioning, enhancing scalability and flexibility.
This collection of software enhancements ensures that Lightbits will continue to deliver a robust and efficient storage solution, meeting the demanding storage needs of our users. If you have any questions regarding a specific feature enhancement, contact us to be connected to a cloud storage expert.
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