Hammerspace Announces Version 4.6.5
New Features and Enhancements in Hammerspace v4.6.5
Hammerspace software release, version 4.6.5, brings several exciting new features and important updates.
- User Experience Enhancements
Hammerspace version 4.6.5 brings several usability improvements to the GUI. Active Directory configuration has been simplified and enhanced. Administrators are now able to join Active Directory with or without NFS-to-SMB user mappings configured. Floating and static IP addresses can be auto-registered with AD DNS servers.
Configuration of SMB shares and NFS exports has been decoupled from the configuration of Volumes and backend Storage Systems. Shares and Infrastructure have been given their own configuration tabs.
Live Data Mobility has been enriched with file-granular information on successful as well as unsuccessful data movement between storage volumes. It is now easier than ever to observe where data is stored and how and why it is moved across storage systems and volumes, on-premises as well as in cloud.
- SMB Enhancements
This release brings several improvements to SMB performance and manageability. Hammerspace Administrators can now completely control RFC 2307 and 2307bis mappings between SMB and NFS identities when joining Hammerspace to Active Directory. For SMB-only workloads there is no need to configure AD with RFC 2307 or RFC2307bis schemas. These settings can also be changed at any time. Performance enhancements have been added to SMB user lookups which, in turn, have significantly improved overall SMB file performance.
- Portal IP Observability
The GUI as well as CLI clearly identifies which Hammerspace Node is assigned to a Floating IP. By quickly identifying Floating IP to Node mapping manageability as well as usability has been greatly enhanced. Furthermore, static as well as Floating IP addresses can now be automatically registered in DNS through Active Directory.
- Active Directory and Network Time Protocol Health Checks
Diagnostic health checks have been added to make it easier to proactively identify and address any potential issues with Active Directory (AD) and Network Time Protocol (NTP) configurations.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 Client Support
RHEL 8.5 is now fully supported. Red Hat Enterprise Linux brings many additional and important enhancements with version 8.5. For more information on RHEL 8.5 please refer to the official Red Hat release notes.
- Expanded Support Matrix
Qumulo is now fully supported as a backend storage system. Customers can add entire Qumulo clusters or individual shares and exports or subdirectories to a Hammerspace Global Data Environment.
Recently released bare-metal servers from Dell and IBM are now also supported.
Technology Preview Features
Hammerspace makes the following available strictly for preview and testing purposes. Technology Preview Features are not supported for production use. These features are typically made available with full support in the subsequent release.
- RDMA Support
Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is a direct memory access between computers without involving the operating system. This, consequently, reduces latency and optimizes performance. RDMA support for NFS version 4.2 clients is available as a technology preview feature. In Version 4.6.5, support has been added to configure RDMA access for DSX and third-party volumes through the CLI.
- Antivirus
Hammerspace provides antivirus scanning through ICAP (Internet Content Adaptation Protocol) as a preview feature. Thus far, McAfee and ClamAV have been tested (preview only). Additional AV vendors will be tested and added on a case-by-case basis.