Orka 3.2 Release Notes

What’s New in the Release

Orka Cluster version 3.2 introduces a new feature, Scheduled Caching, and also provides support for Sequoia 15.0 VM images.

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NOTE

Sequoia support is dependent on requesting that some or all nodes are upgraded to Sequoia 15.0 in the upgrade request service ticket.

Scheduled Caching

Scheduled caching enables users to configure their Orka clusters to proactively pull VM images, avoiding long startup times when the VM is first run.

The scheduled caching feature requires planning for target nodes and optimal maintenance window periods. There is a noticeable impact on VMs running during image cache downloads (particularly on I/O operations). It is best to avoid caching while scheduling running builds unless the image size is smaller < 16GB.

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NOTE

The cache downloads directly from OCI repositories are currently slower than normal image download times by approximately 2-3x. For the beta release it is better to cache from NFS stores. If necessary, pull repo images down to NFS stores and then begin cache downloads to cluster nodes. Caching an image to more than five nodes simultaneously also adds delay to cache download completion time.

Sequoia Support

The Orka Cluster 3.2 release also introduces official support for macOS Sequoia release 15.0. To deploy Sequoia based VMs on your cluster you will need to have your cluster nodes upgraded to the Sequoia 15.0 release as well as the host OS is a dependency of running a Sequoia guest OS. When requesting your Orka Cluster upgrade to release 3.2 you should also specify any nodes you wish to run Sequoia VMs on as well so the OS can be upgraded.

Kubernetes update

While upgrading Orka Cluster to release 3.2, MacStadium will also upgrade the cluster to Kubernetes stable version 1.3.0. This process must be done serially upgrading to each successive version from the current version, typically 1.5.3. Therefore, an Orka Cluster upgrade requires a longer maintenance window, and coupled with a possible node OS update, adds additional potential steps extending the entire upgrade duration even longer. For larger install bases, over 25 nodes, it is important to consider these upgrade duration factors when requesting your software upgrade.

Upgrading

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WARNING

• A scheduled maintenance window is required.
• This release requires a maintenance window of up to 3 hours depending on the size of the cluster.

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NOTES

• Orka 3.2.0 is a new Orka release upgrade. For more information, see Orka Upgrades.
• For customers who have not yet upgraded to Orka Cluster 3.0.0 please read the migration guide before submitting a ticket.

1. Submit a ticket through the MacStadium portal.
2. Schedule a time for the maintenance window that works using the link provided in the ticket.
   The suggested time must be Monday through Thursday, 6 am or 10 pm PST (9 am or 1 pm EST), depending on MacStadium Global Operations calendar availability.
3. Follow this migration guide to configure your cluster and tools after the migration. If you are upgraded from Orka 2.4.x, review the 2.4.x to 3.0.0: CLI Mapping and 2.4.x to 3.0.0: API Mapping to decide how to migrate it.