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What's new with Astra Control Service

Contributors netapp-mwallis netapp-dbagwell RSS

NetApp periodically updates Astra Control Service to bring you new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

14 March 2024

New features and support

This is a minor bug fix release.

7 November 2023

New features and support
  • Backup and restore capabilities for applications with ontap-nas-economy driver-backed storage backends: Enable backup and restore operations for ontap-nas-economy with some simple steps.

  • Astra Control Service support for on-premises Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters

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

  • Introducing Astra Control Provisioner

    With the 23.10 release, Astra Control introduces a new software component called Astra Control Provisioner that will be available to all licensed Astra Control users. Astra Control Provisioner provides access to a superset of advanced management and storage provisioning features beyond those that Astra Trident provides. These features are available to all Astra Control customers at no additional cost.

    • Get started with Astra Control Provisioner
      You can enable Astra Control Provisioner if you have installed and configured your environment to use Astra Trident 23.10.

    • Astra Control Provisioner functionality

      The following features are available with the Astra Control Provisioner 23.10 release:

      • Enhanced storage backend security with Kerberos 5 encryption: You can improve storage security by enabling encryption for the traffic between your managed cluster and the storage backend. Astra Control Provisioner supports Kerberos 5 encryption over NFSv4.1 connections from Red Hat OpenShift clusters to Azure NetApp Files and on-premise ONTAP volumes.

      • Recover data using a snapshot: Astra Control Provisioner provides rapid, in-place volume restoration from a snapshot using the TridentActionSnapshotRestore (TASR) CR.

      • Backup and restore capabilities for applications with ontap-nas-economy driver-backed storage backends: As described above.

  • Astra Control Service support for Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) clusters

  • Support for managing applications that use NVMe/TCP storage
    Astra Control can now manage applications backed by persistent volumes that are connected using NVMe/TCP.

  • Execution hooks turned off by default: 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.

2 October 2023

New features and support

This is a minor bug fix release.

27 July 2023

New features and support
  • Clone operations now support live clones only (current state of managed application). To clone from a snapshot or backup, use the restore workflow.

26 June 2023

New features and support
  • Azure Marketplace subscriptions are now billed per hour instead of per minute

30 May 2023

New features and support

15 May 2023

New features and support

This is a minor bug fix release.

25 April 2023

New features and support

17 January 2023

New features and support

22 November 2022

New features and support

7 September 2022

This release includes stability and resiliency enhancements for the Astra Control Service infrastructure.

10 August 2022

This release includes the following new features and enhancements.

  • Improved application management workflow
    Improved application management workflows provide increased flexibility when defining applications managed by Astra Control.

  • Support for Amazon Web Services clusters
    Astra Control Service can now manage apps that are running on clusters hosted in Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service. You can configure the clusters to use Amazon Elastic Block Store or Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP as the storage backend.

  • Enhanced execution hooks
    In addition to pre- and post-snapshot execution hooks, you can now configure the following types of execution hooks:

    • Pre-backup

    • Post-backup

    • Post-restore

      Among other improvements, Astra Control now supports using the same script for multiple execution hooks.

      Note The NetApp-provided default pre- and post-snapshot execution hooks for specific applications have been removed in this release. If you do not provide your own execution hooks for snapshots, Astra Control Service will take crash-consistent snapshots only beginning August 4, 2022. Visit the NetApp Verda GitHub repository for sample execution hook scripts that you can modify to fit your environment.
  • Azure Marketplace support
    You can now sign up to Astra Control Service via Azure Marketplace.

  • Cloud provider selection
    While reading the Astra Control Service documentation, you can now select your cloud provider at the top right of the page. You will see documentation relevant only to the cloud provider you select.

    A screenshot of Cloud provider dropdown menu where you can select your cloud provider for cloud-provider specific documentation.

26 April 2022

This release includes the following new features and enhancements.

14 December 2021

This release includes the following new features and enhancements.

  • New storage backend options

Astra Control Service now supports Google Persistent Disk and Azure managed disks as storage backend options.

  • Set up Google Cloud

  • Set up Microsoft Azure with Azure managed disks

    • In-place app restore
      You can now restore a snapshot, clone, or backup of an app in place by restoring to the same cluster and namespace.

    • Script events with execution hooks
      Astra Control supports custom scripts that you can run before or after you take a snapshot of an application. This enables you to perform tasks like suspending database transactions so that the snapshot of your database app is consistent.

    • Operator-deployed apps
      Astra Control supports some apps when they are deployed with operators.

    • Service principals with resource group scope
      Astra Control Service now supports service principals that use a resource group scope.

5 August 2021

This release includes the following new features and enhancements.

  • Astra Control Center
    Astra Control is now available in a new deployment model. Astra Control Center is self-managed software that you install and operate in your data center so that you can manage Kubernetes application lifecycle management for on-premise Kubernetes clusters.

  • Bring your own bucket
    You can now manage the buckets that Astra uses for backups and clones by adding additional buckets and by changing the default bucket for the Kubernetes clusters in your cloud provider.

2 June 2021

This release includes bug fixes and the following enhancements to Google Cloud support.

15 April 2021

This release includes the following new features and enhancements.

  • Support for AKS clusters
    Astra Control Service can now manage apps that are running on a managed Kubernetes cluster in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

  • REST API
    The Astra Control REST API is now available for use. The API is based on modern technologies and current best practices.

  • Annual subscription
    Astra Control Service now offers a Premium Subscription.

    Pre-pay at a discounted rate with an annual subscription that enables you to manage up to 10 apps per application pack. Contact NetApp Sales to purchase as many packs as needed for your organization—​for example, purchase 3 packs to manage 30 apps from Astra Control Service.

    If you manage more apps than allowed by your annual subscription, then you'll be charged at the overage rate of $0.005 per minute, per application (the same as Premium PayGo).

  • Namespace and app visualization
    We enhanced the Discovered Apps page to better show the hierarchy between namespaces and apps. Just expand a namespace to see the apps contained in that namespace.

    A screenshot of the Apps page with the Discovered tab selected.

  • User interface enhancements
    Data protection wizards were enhanced for ease of use. For example, we refined the Protection Policy wizard to more easily view the protection schedule as you define it.

    A screenshot of the Configure Protection Policy dialog box where you can enable Hourly, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly schedules.

  • Activity enhancements
    We've made it easier to view details about the activities in your Astra Control account.

    • Filter the activity list by managed app, severity level, user, and time range.

    • Download your Astra Control account activity to a CSV file.

    • View activities directly from the Clusters page or the Apps page after selecting a cluster or an app.

1 March 2021

Astra Control Service now supports the CVS service type with Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud. This is in addition to already supporting the CVS-Performance service type. Just as a reminder, Astra Control Service uses Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud as the storage backend for your persistent volumes.

This enhancement means that Astra Control Service can now manage app data for Kubernetes clusters that are running in any Google Cloud region where Cloud Volumes Service is supported.

If you have the flexibility to choose between Google Cloud regions, then you can pick either CVS or CVS-Performance, depending on your performance requirements. Learn more about choosing a service type.

25 January 2021

We're pleased to announce that Astra Control Service is now Generally Available. We incorporated a lot of the feedback that we received from the Beta release and made a few other notable enhancements.

  • Billing is now available, which enables you to move from the Free Plan to the Premium Plan. Learn more about billing.

  • Astra Control Service now creates Persistent Volumes with a minimum size of 100 GiB when using the CVS-Performance service type.

  • Astra Control Service can now discover apps faster.

  • You can now create and delete accounts on your own.

  • We've improved notifications when Astra Control Service can no longer access a Kubernetes cluster.

    These notifications are important because Astra Control Service can't manage apps for disconnected clusters.

17 December 2020 (Beta update)

We primarily focused on bug fixes to improve your experience, but we made a few other notable enhancements:

  • When you add your first Kubernetes compute to Astra Control Service, the object store is now created in the geography where the cluster resides.

  • Details about persistent volumes is now available when you view storage details at the compute level.

    A screenshot of the persistent volumes that were provisioned to a Kubernetes cluster.

  • We added an option to restore an application from an existing snapshot or backup.

    A screenshot of the Data protection tab for an app where you can select the action drop-down to select Restore application.

  • If you delete a Kubernetes cluster that Astra Control Service is managing, the cluster now shows up in a Removed state. You can then remove the cluster from Astra Control Service.

  • Account owners can now modify the assigned roles for other users.

  • We added a section for billing, which will be enabled when Astra Control Service is released for General Availability (GA).