Orka v1.5.4

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Orka Release Notes

v1.5.4
June 3, 2021
Improvements | Bug fixes

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v1.5.3
April 26, 2021
Improvements | Bug fixes

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v1.5.2
April 7, 2021
Improvements | Bug fixes

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v1.5.1
March 26, 2021
Improvements | Bug fixes

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v1.5.0
March 2, 2021
New features | Improvements | Bug fixes

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How to upgrade

Download CLI | API Docs

We’re continually working to provide you with new features, tools, and plugins, and improve your overall Orka experience. For the latest and greatest, be sure to update your CLI to 1.5.4 after your environment has been updated to 1.5.4. Here’s an overview of what changes with versions 1.5.4, 1.5.3, 1.5.2, 1.5.1, and 1.5.0.

Version 1.5.4 contains the new features, improvements, and bug fixes from 1.5.3.
Version 1.5.3 contains the new features, improvements, and bug fixes from 1.5.2.
Version 1.5.2 contains the new features, improvements, and bug fixes from 1.5.1.
Version 1.5.1 contains the new features, improvements, and bug fixes from 1.5.0.

New features

Orka 1.5.4, 1.5.3, 1.5.2, 1.5.1, and 1.5.0 introduce the following new features.

GPU passthrough (Experimental)

You can now access the onboard GPU for Mac Pro hosts in Orka. This is an experimental feature and some advanced functionality may not be available.

The GPU can now be attached to a VM to run simulation or rendering steps in your CI/CD workflow. This includes the capability to access the Metal API.

Learn more about GPU Passthrough.

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IMPORTANT

To activate this feature in your environment, indicate that you would like to request access to GPU Passthrough in your upgrade ticket. You will need to delete all VMs prior to upgrading to 1.5.0 with GPU Passthrough.

Save VM state

You can now save the memory state of a running VM. This allows you to re-deploy a VM in the same state with any running processes intact. This also considerably improves the boot-up time of any VM that has a saved state.

See how to optimize VM startup time with VM saved state

VM metadata injection

You can now inject a key-value pair into the VM during a VM deploy operation. This key-value pair can be used to uniquely identify the VM to any agents running on the VM.

Learn how to inject and retrieve VM metadata.

Bring your own TLS certificate

You can now provide your own TLS certificate to access your Orka environment from a user-defined domain (such as orka.company.com).

See this link to access instructions to set this up in your environment.

Image resize

You can now resize an image you have previously committed.

See CLI command and instructions for manual resize .

Orka CLI arrow-key navigation in interactive mode

You can now use arrow-up and arrow-down from the keyboard to navigate through the Orka CLI prompts in interactive mode.

You can move through the prompt as many times as you need. Hitting Enter on the final prompt executes the command.

Improvements

Orka 1.5.4, 1.5.3, 1.5.2, 1.5.1, and 1.5.0 introduce the following improvements.

Performance Improvements

• IO intensive operations now run significantly faster. This improvement is most noticeable on io-intensive workloads.

Learn how to boost your IO performance.

Signed Orka CLI package distribution

The Orka CLI is now distributed as a signed package on macOS. You will no longer need to perform additional steps to get the Orka CLI up and running on your macOS.

Improved output when listing VM configs

• orka vm configs now lists the vCPU setting for the VM configuration.
• GET /resources/vm/configs now lists the vCPU setting for the VM configuration.
• The VM Configs page in the Web UI now lists the vCPU setting for each VM configuration.

Improved output for environment checks with the Orka API

The Orka API now returns uniform output for environment checks.

TLS-enabled custom Orka domains available by default

Custom Orka domains are now available by default. You can use a custom Orka domain (such as company.orka.app) to access your Orka environment instead of the default Orka endpoints (10.221.188.100 or 10.10.10.100).

See this link to learn more about custom Orka domains.

Web UI improvements

• The Node details page in the Web UI now lists all VMs deployed on a particular node.
• You can now commit your changes to the base image from the Web UI.

Improved deploy time of VMs using saved state

• The deploy time of VMs using saved state after the initial deployment on a node is now significantly improved

Image name character limit increase

• Image names character limit is not increased to up to 63 characters.

Bug fixes

Orka 1.5.4, 1.5.3, 1.5.2, 1.5.1, and 1.5.0 introduce the following bug fixes.

General bug fixes

• Deploying a VM to a grouped node now returns the correct error message: Requested node XXX is not available. Make sure the node has enough available resources and is not dedicated to a user group.
• Deleting an image or ISO with a name longer than 30 characters is now possible
• Creating an image or ISO with a name longer than 30 characters now returns the correct error message Image/iso name can only contain numbers, periods, underscores, hyphens, and be less than 30 characters
• Creating a VM with a name longer than 38 characters now returns the correct error message: VM name must consist of lower case alphanumeric characters or "-", start with an alphabetic character, end with an alphanumeric character and may not be greater than 38 characters
• Creating an image with image save now sets correctly date_added and owner
• Breaking a VM by deleting its base image is now not possible
• Creating a kube config now behaves as expected. Previously, creating a kube config could fail sporadically.
• Disappearing VM configs and VMs from the VM list is now not possible. Previously, VM configs or VMs disappear from the VM list in some situations.
• vm list, vm status and vm migrate commands now work with VMs deployed with versions 1.4.3 or earlier. Previously, those commands were failing to recognize old VMs.
• image save and image commit now work with stopped VMs. Previously, those commands failed to execute.
• orka.app certificates are now automatically renewed. Previously, they were expiring after 90 days and the https API endpoint was serving the expired certificate.
• Nested virtualization now works as expected on both Catalina and BigSur Orka VMs.
• Orka API is now highly available when using a custom orka.app certificate
• An improved error is now shown when uploading a custom passphrase protected SSL certificate
• Retrieving the logs via the API is now enhanced with an additional parameter limit that allows limiting the results returned
• The connectivity between VMs when using port mappings is now improved
• The installation of the latest Big Sur from an ISO is fixed now

Orka CLI bug fixes

• Attaching a disk on vm create-config now attaches the disk successfully on further vm deploy from the created VM configuration
• Orka CLI commands now exit with a correct exit code. They exit with 0 when the command is successfully executed and -1 when the command fails.
• Failed VMs are now visible in the VM list
• orka image resize CLI command doesn't timeout anymore
• It is now possible to define multiple port mappings when deploying a VM via the CLI. Till now this was possible from the API only

Known issues

• If your git-related operations are hanging and nothing happens on an Orka VM, most probably your Xcode is stuck in the "Verifying Xcode dialog" state. To ensure if this is the case, you can connect to your VM via VNC, start the Xcode application and check if you will get a small window saying "Verifying Xcode".
  To resolve the issue, either VNC to the VM and wait for the verify process to complete or execute the following command from the Terminal to disable Xcode verification:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine '/Applications/Xcode.app'

How to upgrade

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Scheduled maintenance window required

Orka 1.5.4, 1.5.3, 1.5.2, 1.5.1, and 1.5.0 are new Orka releases. For more information, see Orka Upgrades.

This release requires a maintenance window of 2 hours.

1. Submit a ticket through the MacStadium portal.
2. Suggest a time for the maintenance window that works for you.
   The suggested time(s) must be Monday through Thursday, 5am to 6pm PST (8am to 9pm EST).