The 24.02 release focuses primarily on fixing a number of minor bugs. No new resource types have been added to the Astra Control API.

Astra Control Center 24.02 includes declarative Kubernetes functionality that enables you to perform data management from a native Kubernetes custom resource (CR). This feature is not yet generally available. See Astra Control Center: What's new for more information if needed.

You can enable backup and restore operations for ontap-nas-economy storage backends.

Astra Control now supports unalterable, read-only backups as an additional security layer against malware and other threats.

Beginning with this release, execution hooks functionality can be enabled or disabled for additional security (it is disabled by default). If you have not yet created execution hooks for use with Astra Control, you need to enable the execution hooks feature to begin creating hooks. If you created execution hooks prior to this release, the execution hooks functionality stays enabled and you can use hooks as you would normally.

The clone operation now supports live clones only (the current state of the managed application). To clone from a snapshot or backup, you need to use the restore operation. Also, applications can now be replicated between ONTAP storage backends within the same Kubernetes cluster.

Additional storage backends can now be used with Astra Control Center including:

The new execution hook type post-failover is available with Astra Control Center.

The Azure Marketplace subscriptions are now billed per hour instead of per minute. Also see Set up billing.

You can enable performance optimization for restic backups using the flag useResticParallel in the new astra.datamover settings API resource. When set to true, the number of backendConnections that restic uses is increased when backing up large volumes to an Azure container. For volumes of 1TB through 4TB, 128 connections are used. For volumes larger than 4TB, 512 backend connections are used.

You can select the destination storage class during restore or clone operations.

When backing up a managed app in a private on-premises cluster that has an ANF storage backend, you can now enable the dynamic ANF pools feature by providing a subscription ID. See Enable dynamic ANF pools for more information.

You can selectively include or exclude application resources during restore operations. This is done using a filter rule based on a specific namespace, name, label, or GroupVersionKind value.

Support for managing applications has been extended to data-only apps.

When using execution hooks, you can now add filters to control which containers a hook will match to. If you create multiple filters for a single execution hook, they are combined with a logical AND operator. You can define up to 10 active filters per execution hook.

Four new resources types have been added: apiResource, ldapGroup, ldapUser, and task. In addition, several existing resources and endpoints have been enhanced.

The new task endpoints provide access to managed task resources and can be used to display the status of internal long-running tasks.

Support has been added for apps that span multiple namespaces as well as cluster resources associated with namespace-qualified resources.

Multiple account subscriptions can now be added for each of the cloud providers.

Additional workflows illustrating the Astra Control REST API have been added. See Infrastructure workflows and Management workflows for more information.

Three new resources types have been added: Certificate, Group, and AppMirror. In addition, the versions of several existing resources have been updated.

You can optionally configure Astra Control Center to integrate with an LDAP server to authenticate selected Astra users. See LDAP configuration for more information.

Support for execution hooks was added with the Astra Control 21.12 release. In addition to the existing pre-snapshot and post-snapshot execution hooks, you can now configure the following types of execution hooks with the 22.08 release:

Astra Control now also allows same script to be used for multiple execution hooks.

You can now replicate data and application changes among clusters using NetApp SnapMirror technology. This enhancement can be used to improve your business continuity and recovery capabilities.

Two new resources types have been added: Package and Upgrade. In addition, the versions of several existing resources have been upgraded.

When binding a role to an associated user, you can limit the namespaces the user has access to. See the Role Binding API reference and RBAC security for more information.

You can remove a bucket when it is no longer needed or is not functioning properly.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP is now supported as a storage backend.

There are several additional enhancements to the two Astra Control product implementations, including:

See the What's new page at the Astra Control Center and Astra Control Service documentation sites.

Every release of Astra Control includes a distinct REST API that has been enhanced and tailored to the features of the specific release. The documentation for each release of the Astra Control REST API is now available at its own dedicated web site along with the associated GitHub content repository. The main doc site Astra Control Automation always contains the documentation for the most current release. See Earlier versions of Astra Control Automation documentation for information about prior releases.

The number of REST resource types has continued to expand with an emphasis on execution hooks and storage backends. The new resources include: account, execution hook, hook source, execution hook override, cluster node, managed storage backend, namespace, storage device, and storage node. See Resources for more information.

NetApp Astra Control Python SDK is an open source package that makes it easier to develop automation code for your Astra Control environment. At the core is the Astra SDK which includes a set of classes to abstract the complexity of the REST API calls. There is also a toolkit script to execute specific administrative tasks by wrapping and abstracting the Python classes. See NetApp Astra Control Python SDK for more information.

In addition to the existing Astra Control Service offering provided as a public cloud service, this release also includes the Astra Control Center on-premises deployment model. You can install Astra Control Center at your site to manage your local Kubernetes environment. The two Astra Control deployment models share the same REST API, with minor differences noted as needed in the documentation.

The number of resources accessible through the Astra Control REST API has greatly expanded, with many of the new resources providing a foundation for the on-premises Astra Control Center offering. The new resources include: ASUP, entitlement, feature, license, setting, subscription, bucket, cloud, cluster, managed cluster, storage backend, and storage class. See Resources for more information.

In addition to the expanded REST resources, there are several other new API endpoints available to support an Astra Control deployment.

The Astra Control REST API is available for use with the Astra Control Service offering. It has been created based on REST technologies and current best practices. The API provides a foundation for the automation of your Astra deployments and includes the following features and benefits.