Installation Notes

Install Update within Cluster

Please read the following release notes carefully, before continuing. When installing this update on a Collax V-Cube+ cluster the following steps have to be performed:

/ Important information

Please have a look at the Collax V-Cube 6.9.0 Release Notes if the nodes have Version 6.8.28 or above and haven’t been updated yet. For updates below 6.8.22, it is necessary that both nodes are set in maintenance mode simultaneously.

Procedure

1. Click at High Availability within the Dashboard.
2. Select the other (not the local) V-Cube+ node and change into the Start Maintenance dialog.
3. Now, put this other node into maintenance mode by confirming the query in the dialog. Wait until the maintenance mode is reached. Depending on the number of virtual machines and hard disk, this can take some time. Virtual machines will be migrated live, which can take a few minutes depending on the size of the RAM. The progress will be displayed in the list of background activities.
4. Close the dialog.
5. In the list of nodes, select again the other node whose software is to be updated by right-clicking it.
6. Change to System Update ….
7. Click Check for Updates. The completion will be displayed as “100%”.
8. Click Download and Install. This function will download the latest software packages from the update server and install them. The completion will be displayed as Install - 100%.
9. Close the dialog and set the node to active.
10. Please repeat this procedure for the local node.

New in this Version

Collax Central: New Add-on module - Collax Central

With this version, the new add-on module “Collax Central” is available. It helps to keep track of all Collax servers, making administration easier and points out early on emerging problems. The Collax Central Dashboard is a tool to make the administration efficient and the place where all the threads come together. This can be problems to be recognized at a glance in a large server landscape. Sporadic and regular maintenance tasks go quickly by the hand. Collax Central is available as a module for the Collax V and C servers. If you are interested, please contact your dealer, distributor or Collax distributor.

System Management: Linux Kernel 4.9.202

This update installs Linux kernel 4.9.202.

Issues Fixed in this Version

Security: SWAPGS

Experts have discovered critical security holes. SWAPGS refers to an attack on Intel processors, much like Meltdown and Spectre.

Assigned Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) number:

CVE-2019-1125

Security: Intel has fixed security holes

Experts have discovered and fixed critical security holes on Intel processors.

See here .

Security: Important security relevant System Components

This update will also install/update the following important system components:

• sqlite 3.28.0
• Curl 7.65.3
• microcode-20191115

CVE-2019-5018 CVE-2019-8457 CVE-2019-9936 CVE-2019-9937 CVE-2019-5435 CVE-2019-5436

Virtualization: Enlarging diskimages

There are two types of virtual disks to choose from. Diskimage is a hard drive in file format. When creating diskimages, the free space is calculated together with a buffer, and if there is none reserve, an error message is generated that the currently free space is not sufficient for a new hard disk. On the other hand, when enlarging already created diskimages, the available storage space was miscalculated. This will be corrected with the update.

Virtualization: Display speed of network devices of virtual network switches

With virtual network switches, the speed of the physical Ethernet interfaces is displayed. Nevertheless, there was also a speed for logical interfaces such as bonding and VLAN devices displayed even though they have no speed. Therefore, the display of speed for logical devices is hidden in the current release.

Virtualization: Share for VM related data such as isos and file images

With the Collax V-Cube and Collax V-Cube+ virtualization servers, there is the option to access directory sharing for VM-related data such as ISOs and disk images using SMB. Due to a bug in the Samba implementation, access from Windows 10 clients worked no more. This will be corrected with the update.

V-Cube+: Underline in iSCSI resource

When the name of an iSCSI disk contained one or more underlines, and the disk was used in an iSCSI initiator, only the part before the first underline was shown in the resource form.

Backup/Restore: Baremetal-Restore of virtual harddiscs

After a complete system crash, the Collax V-Cube virtualization server can be restored via bare metal restore to be put back into operation. From Collax V-Cube version 6.9.0 the automatic creation of the virtual hard disks failed, so that a backup of the backup process no longer worked without manual intervention. Notice in the case of a Baremetal restore, use the current version or contact the support. We are happy to help you here.

System Management: Monitoring BBU state on Broadcom Controllers

Nagios’ active monitoring of RAID controllers from Broadcom (Avago / LSI) will be adapted with this release. Due to a behavior change, the code had to be adjusted to give a degraded BBU the status CRITICAL.

System Management: Password for relay email server

A server must be selected to send the system emails correctly. If the relay server requires authentication, the corresponding password for the user ID must be entered here. Due to an error, passwords with paragraph characters contained in them did not work. This has been fixed with this update. In addition, a subsequent error when sending the test email was corrected.

Notes

Hardware: Changed partition scheme for new installation since version 6.9.0 / Important

when replacing a node

If one of the nodes is defective, it can simply be exchanged via the “Add New Node” dialog. Due to a changed partition schemes take a few things into account.

• Both nodes should have nearly identical hardware equipment - Both nodes must have the same version - An additional 10 GB of free space must be available on the storage volume “default” if the version of the existing node at installation was older than 6.9.0. Under “Virtual Disks” click on “Storage Volumes”, then right click on the storage volume “default” and check the free space specified under Size.

Misc: Windows Setup notes Error Message 0x80300001

If Windows Server 2008 R2 and above is to be installed on Virtio hard disks using the Virtio driver CD for Windows, Windows reports the error code 0x80300001. The error message occurs if the partitions are recognized and the user clicks the button Next. The message means, that the installation CD of Windows needs to be inserted again.