perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Andrew Lake <>]

All,

 

perfSONAR 4.0 is now available! perfSONAR 4.0 is a significant update to the perfSONAR software and brings about many changes we hope will strengthen the foundation on which the project is built going forward. Thank you to all those in the community that helped test and provide feedback over the past few months. We would also like to thank everyone for their patience.  This release incorporates possibly the largest single change in perfSONAR’s 15-year history, and we spent considerable time making sure it was right. Please see the rest of this email for details on changes, getting the update and other important information. 

 

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Changes since 3.5.1

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Highlights include:

- New scheduling software called pScheduler that provides increased visibility, extensibility and control in the measurement process. 

- CentOS 7 support

- Debian perfsonar-toolkit bundle support

- Updated graphs

- Support for email alerting in MaDDash

For a more complete list of changes, see the full release notes at: http://www.perfsonar.net/release-notes/version-4-0/

 

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Getting 4.0

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As stated in our reminders over the last two weeks, if you are running auto-updates you should get perfSONAR 4.0 automatically. For others see http://docs.perfsonar.net/install_getting.html. Also, please review our hardware requirements, in particular with respect to CPU, as there have been some changes, specifically for those hosts planning to run and store a large number of tests: http://docs.perfsonar.net/install_hardware.html.

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BWCTL Backward Compatibility

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pScheduler is a completely new codebase and protocol. It does NOT speak the BWCTL protocol natively but it does provide a backward compatibility strategy with BWCTL. In general you should not have to take any extra steps to continue testing to sites running BWCTL and vice versa. For more information see the document at http://docs.perfsonar.net/pscheduler_intro.html#bwctl-backward-compatibility.

Also, we HIGHLY recommend you start using the new pscheduler command instead of the bwctl for all command-line tests since doing so has the potential to create scheduling conflicts. See http://docs.perfsonar.net/pscheduler_ref_bwctl.html for a guide on how to convert BWCTL commands to pScheduler.

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Important Upgrade Notes

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- All your data and tests should be preserved during the upgrade of an existing 3.5 host. If for whatever reason this does not happen, please contact our user list if you need assistance.

- Debian/Ubuntu users of perfSONAR 3.5.1 will not get this update automatically. See our Debian upgrade guide for information on updating your host: http://docs.perfsonar.net/install_debian.html#upgrading-from-3-5-1

- For CentOS users running auto-updates, it may take up to 72 hours for your system to get the release depending on when mirrors sync and yum-cron runs.

- You may want to reboot your host after update. While not strictly required, this may help with occasional issues we have see with httpd processes not restarting properly and similar

- If you were pointing at the staging repository on a production host, you should remove it now. You can do so by running "yum remove Internet2-repo-staging"

- perfSONAR 4.0 requires more CPU than previous versions as a result of some of the increased functionality. Multiple warning about this were shared with auto-updaters prior to the release. See our hardware requirements page for more information: http://docs.perfsonar.net/install_hardware.html

- Web100 kernels are not provided for CentOS 7. The plan is to continue to provide Web100 kernels for CentOS 6 until October 17, 2017.

- NDT and NPAD are no longer installed for new install since they require Web100. They will NOT be removed from existing systems automatically, but require a web100 kernel to operate so will either require an outdated kernel or cease to function after October 17, 2017

- The perfsonar-regular testing package is gone in perfSONAR 4.0. This means your /etc/perfsonar/regulartesting.conf file has been moved to /etc/perfsonar/meshconfig-agent-tasks.conf. It also means you no longer have a perfsonar-regulartesting daemon running

- The /usr/lib/perfsonar/bin/generate_configuration script and associated cron are gone and now handled by the new perfsonar-meshconfig-agent daemon

- The /usr/lib/perfsonar/bin/generate_gui_configuration script and associated cron are gone and now handled by the new perfsonar-meshconfig-guiagent daemon. This daemon will now create traceroute and ping dashboard by default if you have the tests defined.

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More Information

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Don't forget we have a webinar on perfSONAR 4.0 scheduled for Thursday April 20th. For  past talks on perfSONAR 4.0 given at the 2016 Technology Exchange see below:

http://meetings.internet2.edu/2016-technology-exchange/detail/10004309/

http://meetings.internet2.edu/2016-technology-exchange/detail/10004491/

http://meetings.internet2.edu/2016-technology-exchange/detail/10004321/

Thank you,

The perfSONAR Development Team