CloudBees Build Acceleration 2020.07.00 preview release notes

CloudBees is introducing new, self-describing product names across our entire product line that make them easier for anyone in our target market to find, and to understand intuitively what they do.

With the release of version 2020.07.00, what you’ve known previously as CloudBees Accelerator, or even ElectricAccelerator, is now called CloudBees Build Acceleration. The only thing that’s changed is the name—​and the new features listed below.

Visual Studio Plugin and Insight have also been updated with the new name.

CloudBees Build Acceleration now includes moxie, a tool to test basic cluster setup and demonstrate acceleration features. Moxie works by generating a synthetic build-like workload, including makefiles, compilers, linkers and other tools typically found in a software build.

Documentation: Simulating builds

By default CloudBees Build Acceleration will now use TLS communication between emake and the Cluster Manager and the agents and the Cluster Manager. When installing the Cluster Manager, the installer will create a self-signed certificate and the host name will be verified during the communication. Customers wishing to upgrade to trusted certificates can use the emake option --emake-cm-security=strict along with the --emake-cm-cacert and --emake-cm-keystore options. The --emake-cm-security=none option can be used to turn off TLS communication.

On the agent side strict security can be turned on using the ecagent service script and modifying the -cmsecurity option. The --cmcacert and -cmkeystore options must also be provided.

When creating a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cloud bursting resource, selecting the Prefer Preemptible Instances checkbox causes the cloud bursting instances to be launched with preemptible scheduling.

Support for Yocto 3.1 (Dunfell) has been added to ebitbake.

The responsiveness of large, busy clusters has been improved.

Electric File System (EFS) performance has been improved by using slab allocators for enodes.

No changes.

Documentation: CloudBees Build Acceleration supported platforms

None.

Because the agent to Cluster Manager communication uses TLS by default, the agent image used for AWS EC2, GCP or Azure cloud bursting must also be upgraded to the 2020.07.00 release in order for cloud bursting to work.

Starting in August 2019, the release strategy for CloudBees Build Acceleration is updated to add a “preview” release in addition to the standard long-term support (LTS), maintenance (patch), and hotfix releases.

The release numbering for the preview releases uses a new <year>.<month>.00 numbering scheme. For example, 2020.07.00.

For details about the new release strategy, see the CloudBees maintenance lifecycle policies web page.

As of version 11.1, perpetual license files include a Version field and are therefore no longer transferable to succeeding product versions. At run time, to be considered valid by the Cluster Manager, the license file must have a Version that equals or exceeds the version of the Cluster Manager itself. Version checks consider only the major.minor version (for example, a license for 11.1 is valid for 11.1.0, 11.1.1, 11.1.2, and so on).

eMake authenticates with the Cluster Manager via the eMake/Cluster Manager protocol version to ensure that the eMake and Cluster Manager licenses match. If the license has no Version field, it will be considered invalid by the 11.1 Cluster Manager.

You can upgrade just the Cluster Manager, but starting with version 11.1, if you upgrade eMake or agents, you must also upgrade the Cluster Manager. When you upgrade the Cluster Manager, you must also acquire a new license if you are currently using a perpetual license.

You can upgrade to new patch releases (but not new feature releases) without acquiring a new license. For example, if your current license specifies 11.1, then you can use a Cluster Manager with version 11.1, 11.1.1, 11.1.2, and so on. Also, for example, if your license specifies 12.0, then you can use a Cluster Manager with version 12.0, 12.0.1, 12.0.2, and so on, as well as 11.x.

The Administration > Licenses page in the Cluster Manager web UI has a Version column, which provides the product version of each license in the list. This information is blank for a license with no explicit version (such as an evaluation license).

Make sure that you import a compliant license into the Cluster Manager before upgrading. For assistance, see CloudBees Support. For details about importing a license, see Logging In and Enabling Licensing - Importing Your License. (EC-13170 and EC-13154)

CloudBees no longer distributes the JDBC drivers for MySQL or Oracle databases. To use one of these databases, you must download its driver directly from the Oracle website, then copy it to the appropriate directory on the Cluster Manager server, and then restart the Cluster Manager service. For details, see Installing JDBC Drivers for MySQL or Oracle Databases.

If you copy the emake executable to a new location, you must also copy the execserver executable to that location. By default, the path to the execserver executable is /opt/ecloud/i686_Linux/32/bin/execserver (for 32-bit eMake) or /opt/ecloud/i686_Linux/64/bin/execserver (for 64-bit eMake).

The identifier that is used to find certain types of jobs in the eMake history file changed in version 8.0. After an upgrade from version 7.2.2 or older versions to version 8.0or newer versions, users should regenerate their history files by running their first build with the --emake-history=create option to avoid unnecessary serializations. This build might have more conflicts than normal (but subsequent builds should return to normal).

As of version 9.1, for new CloudBees Build Acceleration subscription licenses, the number of builds that you can run concurrently is license-limited. The noLicenseWaitTime performance metric indicates the amount of time that a build spent waiting for a concurrent build license because the number of concurrent builds reached the license limit. Also, as of version 9.1, JobCache is not separately licensed and is now included with the concurrent build license.

Customers using pre-9.1 CloudBees Build Acceleration licenses may continue to use those licenses, including the licenses for the JobCache add-on.

For details about licensing for concurrent builds, see the Logging In and Enabling Licensing. (EC-12095)

CloudBees Build Acceleration documentation for this preview release is available at the CloudBees Build Acceleration documentation page.

Documentation on the website is updated periodically.

Built into the Cluster Manager are:

To contact CloudBees Support, go to https://support.cloudbees.com/, and then click Submit a request to submit or see your support tickets.

Be prepared to provide your:

Go to https://support.cloudbees.com/hc/en-us/sections/360006494811 to find in-depth explanations of specific topics and solutions for specific problems.