Major Changes
This is a major update to 1.3 capabilities. The enhancements include:
- Portal UI and CoreAPI Changes:
- Slices are now viewed AND created within a project – user must first select the project they are working in before being able to create a slice in the Portal. Slices can also be listed per project or all at once across all projects.
- Slice Builder and Viewer now support attaching persistent storage, boot scripts, viewing management IP address, cut-and-paste terminal SSH command as well as downloading and uploading slice topology in a JSON format.
- User profile has editable personal information and publicly-viewable toggles for various fields.
- Similar projects now have editable information and publicly-viewable toggles for various project fields
- Token expiration as well as session timeouts are explicitly flagged by the portal.
- Many internal changes to support variously misbehaving/misconfigured institutional identity providers.
- There are new Control Framework capabilities:
- Full support for slice modify – ability to add/remove nodes, components, services and interfaces
- Many performance-tuning enhancements
- Ability to set and report maintenance state information on a per testbed, per site and per node basis.
- Support for fully virtual (no specialized hardware) OpenStack racks
- New Network Services
- FABNet4Ext and FABNetv6Ext services – publicly connectable counterparts to FABNetv4 and FABNetv6 which now (with special project permissions) allow to connect to the public internet via the dataplane.
- L3VPN – a multi-site L3 service similar to FABNetv4 and FABNetv6, but with user-assigned addressing. Also supports L3VPN-to-L3VPN connections to support public cloud VPCs (completing testing, will be applied as a hotfix to 1.4)
- Integration with Internet2 CloudConnect (I2CC) service to support public cloud VPCs being joined into slices (completing testing, will be applied as a hotfix to 1.4)
- There will be an updated release of FABlib and Jupyter notebooks that helps experimenters take advantage of these new capabilities
- Documentation will be forthcoming as part of FABlib update to support these features.
- MFlib (Measurement Framework library) will also be updated to take advantage of modify and other capabilities
Packages and Components
Control Framework
| Control Framework Core | New network service integrations, full modify support, reporting metrics collection |
| Orchestrator | New network service integrations, full modify support |
| Broker | New network service integrations, full modify support |
| Site Aggregate Manager | New network service integrations, full modify support, support for fully virtual OpenStack aggregates |
| Network Aggregate Manager | Support for Internet2 AL2S, support for new network services |
FIM (FABRIC Information Model) and User APIs
| Basic resource descriptions | Support for maintenance info, improved slice diffiying support, improved packaging and installation, JSON data blobs on all objects (UserData, LayoutData, MFData) |
| FABlib | Currently matches 1.3 capabilities, 1.4 in development |
JupyterHub
| Federated Identity | Stability improvements |
| Storage | N/A |
Portal and System Services
| Portal | Slice viewer/builder enhancements, token and session timeout flagging, slice list per project, updated support for CoreAPI user and project profile feeatures. |
| CoreAPI | SSH key expiration, reporting metrics collection, stability improvements, IdP support fixes |
| Credential Manager | N/A |
Future enhancements
We expect the following features or limitations to be addressed in upcoming releases (expected release and date indicated):
| New features or known limitations | Expected in release |
| FABlib enhancements to support latest features | Ongoing |
| Experiment notebook sharing in the portal | 1.5, Spring 2023 |
| Linking experiments and publications through the portal | 1.6, Fall 2023 |
| Advance reservation support | 1.6, Fall 2023 |
| Ability to manage available compute images | 1.6, Fall 2023 |
| Support for FPGAs and P4-to-FPGA tool workflows | 1.5, Spring 2023 |
| Support for Tofino P4 switches | 1.5, Spring 2023 |
Bugs
Please see Forums for discussions of known bugs in this and other releases.