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What is new with MAAS 3.4

Here you will find release notes for the Beta version(s) of MAAS 3.4.

MAAS 3.4 Beta3 has been released

We are happy to announce that MAAS 3.4 Beta3 has been released with more bug fixes.

MAAS 3.4 Beta2 has been released

We are happy to announce that MAAS 3.4 Beta2 has been released with more bug fixes.

MAAS 3.4 Beta1 has been released

We are happy to announce that MAAS 3.4 Beta1 has been released, with many bug fixes.

MAAS 3.4 Beta 1 features

MAAS 3.4 provides several new features.

Redesigned UI

The MAAS User Interface (UI) has undergone a significant redesign, introducing the MAAS UI new layout. This new layout incorporates various features and improvements aimed at enhancing the user experience for MAAS users and operators who primarily interact with the UI. The MAAS UI new layout introduces several enhancements that aim to improve usability, customization, and navigation within the application

Intended Benefits

The MAAS UI was redesigned with several user benefits in mind.

The MAAS UI new layout introduces a redesigned interface with enhanced features to provide a more efficient and user-friendly experience for MAAS users and operators. By allowing users to customize their views, streamlining form interactions

Configurable session timeout

In MAAS 3.4, we’ve introduced the Configurable Session Timeout feature, offering better control over session length. This feature allows you to set a personalized duration for your sessions, hopefully avoiding abrupt disconnections or lingering sessions. If you’re a user who has login repeatedly, due to short session defaults, or you’re concerned about leaving your session accessible for too long, setting a custom timeout is useful and potentially more secure.

Ansible HA PostgreSQL playbook enhancements

With the latest iteration of MAAS 3.4, we have made significant enhancements to the Ansible playbook, enabling a full High Availability (HA) setup for PostgreSQL. Users can now configure a PostgreSQL cluster with failover and redundancy capabilities directly through the Ansible playbook. This streamlined method incorporates tools such as PAF, corosync, and pacemaker. With PostgreSQL HA enabled, traffic will automatically redirect to a standby database. This can significantly improve system load balancing.

Ansible observability playbook

In MAAS 3.4, we’ve introduced an Ansible Observability (O11y) playbook, allowing users to configure O11y using Ansible. This playbook configures metrics collection, log management, and other key O11y features. Users can easily deploy and manage observability. Ansible also enables version control for configurations, making it easier to track changes and roll back if necessary.

Packer MAAS - SLES

The MAAS 3.4 release expands Packer support to include SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), expanding the the list of deployable Linux distributions. We also support openSUSE and openSUSE Tumbleweed. And we’ve added a template for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 9.

How to install MAAS 3.4 Beta

MAAS will run on just about any modern hardware configuration, even a development laptop. If you’re not sure whether your target server will handle MAAS, you can always double-check.

NOTE: NOTE Support for PostgreSQL 12 has been discontinued in MAAS 3.4. Postgres 14 does not run on Focal 20.04 LTS.

How to do a fresh snap install of MAAS 3.4 Beta1

To install MAAS 3.4 Beta from a snap, simply enter the following:

$ sudo snap install --channel=3.4/beta maas

After entering your password, the snap will download and install from the 3.4 Beta channel.

How to upgrade from an earlier snap version to MAAS 3.3

Maybe instead of a fresh install, you want to upgrade from a earlier snap version to the 3.4 Beta1 snap, and you are using a region+rack configuration, use this command:

$ sudo snap refresh --channel=3.4/beta maas

After entering your password, the snap will refresh from the 3.4 Beta channel. You will not need to re-initialise MAAS.

If you are using a multi-node maas deployment with separate regions and racks, you should first run the upgrade command above for rack nodes, then for region nodes.

How to initialise MAAS 3.4 snap for a test or POC environment

You can initialise MAAS as a compact version for testing. To achieve this, we provide a separate snap, called maas-test-db, which contains a PostgreSQL database for use in testing and evaluating MAAS. The following instructions will help you take advantage of this test configuration.

Once MAAS is installed, you can use the --help flag with maas init to get relevant instructions:

$ sudo maas init --help
usage: maas init [-h] {region+rack,region,rack} . . .

Initialise MAAS in the specified run mode.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

run modes:
  {region+rack,region,rack}
    region+rack         Both region and rack controllers
    region              Region controller only
    rack                Rack controller only

When installing region or rack+region modes, MAAS needs a
PostgreSQL database to connect to.

If you want to set up PostgreSQL for a non-production deployment on
this machine, and configure it for use with MAAS, you can install
the maas-test-db snap before running 'maas init':
    sudo snap install maas-test-db
    sudo maas init region+rack --database-uri maas-test-db:///

We’ll quickly walk through these instructions to confirm your understanding. First, install the maas-test-db snap:

sudo snap install maas-test-db

Note that this step installs a a running PostgreSQL and a MAAS-ready database instantiation. When it’s done, you can double check with a built-in PostgreSQL shell:

$ sudo maas-test-db.psql
psql (12.4)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# \l

This will produce a list of databases, one of which will be maasdb, owned by maas. Note that this database is still empty because MAAS is not yet initialised and, hence, is not yet using the database. Once this is done, you can run the maas init command:

sudo maas init region+rack --database-uri maas-test-db:///

After running for a moment, the command will prompt you for a MAAS URL; typically, you can use the default:

MAAS URL [default=http://10.45.222.159:5240/MAAS]:

When you’ve entered a suitable URL, or accepted the default, the following prompt will appear:

MAAS has been set up.

If you want to configure external authentication or use
MAAS with Canonical RBAC, please run

  sudo maas configauth

To create admins when not using external authentication, run

  sudo maas createadmin

Let’s assume you just want a local testing user named admin:

$ sudo maas createadmin
Username: admin
Password: ******
Again: ******
Email: admin@example.com
Import SSH keys [] (lp:user-id or gh:user-id): gh:yourusername

At this point, MAAS is basically set up and running. You can confirm this with sudo maas status. If you need an API key, you can obtain this with sudo maas apikey --username yourusername. Now you will be able to test and evaluate MAAS by going to the URL you entered or accepted above and entering your admin username and password.

Initialise MAAS for a production configuration

To install MAAS in a production configuration, you need to setup PostgreSQL, as described below.

Setting up PostgreSQL from scratch

To set up PostgreSQL, even if it’s running on a different machine, you can use the following procedure:

  1. You will need to install PostgreSQL on the machine where you want to keep the database. This can be the same machine as the MAAS region/rack controllers or a totally separate machine. If PostgreSQL (version 14) is already running on your target machine, you can skip this step. To install PostgreSQL, run these commands:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y postgresql

  2. You want to make sure you have a suitable PostgreSQL user, which can be accomplished with the following command, where $MAAS_DBUSER is your desired database username, and $MAAS_DBPASS is the intended password for that username. Note that if you’re executing this step in a LXD container (as root, which is the default), you may get a minor error, but the operation will still complete correctly.

    sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE USER \"$MAAS_DBUSER\" WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD '$MAAS_DBPASS'"

  3. Create the MAAS database with the following command, where $MAAS_DBNAME is your desired name for the MAAS database (typically known as maas). Again, if you’re executing this step in a LXD container as root, you can ignore the minor error that results.

    sudo -u postgres createdb -O "$MAAS_DBUSER" "$MAAS_DBNAME"

  4. Edit /etc/postgresql/14/main/pg_hba.conf and add a line for the newly created database, replacing the variables with actual names. You can limit access to a specific network by using a different CIDR than 0/0.

    host    $MAAS_DBNAME    $MAAS_DBUSER    0/0     md5

  5. You can then initialise MAAS via the following command:

    sudo maas init region+rack --database-uri "postgres://$MAAS_DBUSER:$MAAS_DBPASS@$HOSTNAME/$MAAS_DBNAME"

NOTE: You should use localhost for $HOSTNAME if you’re running PostgreSQL on the same box as MAAS.

Don’t worry; if you leave out any of the database parameters, you’ll be prompted for those details.

How to do a fresh install of MAAS 3.3 from packages

MAAS 3.3 from packages runs on 22.04 LTS only. The recommended way to set up an initial MAAS environment is to put everything on one machine:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maas/3.4-next
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get -y install maas

Executing this command leads you to a list of dependent packages to be installed, and a summary prompt that lets you choose whether to continue with the install. Choosing “Y” proceeds with a standard apt package install.

Distributed environment

For a more distributed environment, you can place the region controller on one machine:

sudo apt install maas-region-controller

and the rack controller on another:

sudo apt install maas-rack-controller
sudo maas-rack register

These two steps will lead you through two similar apt install sequences.

MAAS 3.4 Beta1 bug list

MAAS 3.4 Beta2 bug list

MAAS 3.4 Beta3 bug list