perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Andrew Lake <>]

perfSONAR 5.0 is now available! 

This is a major release that removes the current data archive named Esmond and migrates to a new default backend based on OpenSearch (https://opensearch.org/). This version of the software has been in development for quite some time and thank you to everyone who contributed throughout the process with feedback or otherwise. It may take some time for mirrors to update but all OS packages and Docker images that are not already visible should be within a few hours of this email being sent.  Full release notes can be found here: https://www.perfsonar.net/releasenotes-2023-04-17-5-0-0.html

A summary of some major changes to be aware of when your host upgrades can be found below:

- Hosts with the Toolkit bundle installed will NOT have their Esmond data migrated to the new archive. The data will NOT be deleted, it will still live on disk. Instructions to move this data to a new system where it can be viewed can be found here: https://docs.perfsonar.net/release_candidates/5.0.0/legacy_archive_esmond.html

- Hosts currently running a central/standalone Esmond instance or perfsonar-centralmanagement bundle will NOT be automatically upgraded. All clients will continue writing to the archive, even if the clients update to 5.0.0. This gives administrators of these hosts the flexibility to choose when to migrate clients to a new backend, or to run both Esmond and OpenSearch in parallel for a period of time. Instructions on having clients archive to both Esmond and OpenSearch can be found here: https://docs.perfsonar.net/multi_ma_install.html#legacy-installation-writing-to-both-esmond-and-opensearch

- There is a breaking change to the pScheduler limits file. The deprecated “test” limit type will be officially dropped from support. If you are running the default limits file from the toolkit bundle, then there will be no manual intervention needed. If you have made manual changes to your limits file then you may need to update the file by hand. There is a helper script found here that you can use to check if your pScheduler limits needs to be changed: https://github.com/perfsonar/pscheduler-limit-checker-for-5.0. Do not hesitate to contact the mailing list if you have any questions about updating your limits.

In addition to the update considerations above, a few other important notes:

-  perfSONAR 5.0 is available today on CentOS 7, Debian 10, Ubuntu 18 and Ubuntu 20 operating systems. By early summer we plan to add support for Alma 8, Alma 9, Debian 11 and Ubuntu 22. For sites running test points and planning to upgrade to any of those systems, we recommend doing so and using the Docker container as a temporary measure until the operating system packages of those distributions are supported.

- There will be no Toolkit ISO image published for 5.0.0. Going forward you can continue to install the base operating system and use the perfSONAR operating system packages to install perfSONAR with yum or apt. 

Finally, if you are looking for something fun to do with your upgraded 5.0 Toolkit, try our guide for using Grafana with the new backend (and share if you come up with any cool new dashboards!): https://docs.perfsonar.net/grafana_cookbook.html

If you have further questions regarding the installation, migration or usage of perfSONAR send an email to support list .

Thank you,

The perfSONAR Development Team