RackN is excited to announce the release of Digital Rebar v4.11. This release focused on security, performance, and operational enhancements. Feedback from our customers tell us that core improvement-focused releases often have a faster ROI because they focus on current needs for deployed projects.
Release themes
The most significant release changes follow simple themes in improvements for the runner, discovery images and pipelines.
Runner (aka DRP agent) management enhancements. These updates improve how Digital Rebar interacts with managed infrastructure. This is a critical part of the pipeline system. The addition of the Connections API and UX page helps operators determine if machines are alive and accessible. It has the secondary benefit of tracking active DRPCLI connections. Digital Rebar v4.11 can migrate runners managed by other endpoints (including earlier versions of Digital Rebar) so operators can “rehome” machine endpoints.
Discovery (aka Sledgehammer) images based on Alma and Ubuntu. This support is important to many Digital Rebar use cases. Using Alma as the new default discovery O/S provides long term stability for packages and dependencies that were compromised when CentOS was migrated to a stream model. Our new Ubuntu discovery image is targeted specifically for image-based deployment functionality. This is because a key tool in that process, Curtin, relies on peculiarities of Ubuntu.
Pipeline updates. Pipelines provide robust and reusable automation capabilities for Digital Rebar operators. We continue to leverage them to deliver new features. In v4.11, vendor-specific hardware toolchains are now managed by the shared universal hardware workflow. This allows profiles to define exactly which hardware toolchain components are used. Additionally, we’ve greatly expanded virtualization controls for VMware and Proxmox. For VMware, Digital Rebar added integrations with CloudBuilder. We also added Proxmox cluster pipelines that use Terraform to create machines in Proxmox.
Sneak peek at future releases
In our upcoming releases, RackN will continue to expand Digital Rebar to support platform engineering priorities expressed by our customers. This includes streamlined Terraform and Ansible integrations plus significant audit and governance capabilities.
Read the complete v4.11 release notes.
