<div dir="ltr"><p>Hello ,</p><p>The Arvados team is pleased to announce Arvados 2.5.0. This is a major
upgrade, with many new features, changes and bugfixes. We recommend that new
and existing installations of <a href="https://www.arvados.org/release-notes/2.4.4">2.4.4</a> or earlier
upgrade to 2.5.0. See <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/admin/upgrading.html">Upgrading Arvados</a> for upgrade
instructions. For a complete list of changes, visit the <a href="https://www.arvados.org/release-notes/2.5.0/">release notes</a>.<br></p>
<h2 id="gmail-new-features">New Features</h2>
<h3 id="gmail-workbench-2">Workbench 2</h3>
<p>Workbench 2 features a new color scheme, designed for improved
contrast and consistency. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19462">#19462</a></p>
<p>The process pages features new Input and Output panels displaying the
input and output parameters of the process. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/16073">#16073</a> <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19700">#19700</a> <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19848">#19848</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/input-output.png" title="Input and output parameter panels"><img src="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/input-output.png" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="554" height="312"></a></p>
<p>The process page also features a new Resources panel showing what
resources were requested by the container, and (on cloud installs)
what instance type it was actually run on. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19438">#19438</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/resources.png" title="Input and output parameter panels"><img src="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/resources.png" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="554" height="215"></a></p>
<p>The picking dialog now includes the ability to search for projects and
to filter the list of collections within a project. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19783">#19783</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/picker-search.png" title="Input and output parameter panels"><img src="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/picker-search.png" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="554" height="387"></a></p>
<p>The process panel includes new information about how much a workflow
cost to run. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19319">#19319</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/container-cost.png" title="Input and output parameter panels"><img src="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/container-cost.png" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="554" height="258"></a></p>
<p>When you view a workflow step or output collection in Workbench 2,
there’s now a row of breadcrumbs at the top of the page that shows you
the parent workflow and project. This helps users understand how the
object was created, and navigate to those parent objects if
desired. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19504">#19504</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/breadcrumbs.png" title="Input and output parameter panels"><img src="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/breadcrumbs.png" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="554" height="87"></a></p>
<p>The project view now offers the ability to configure a variety of
additional columns for display: UUID, Created at/Trash at/Delete at,
Properties, Portable Data Hash, Version, File Count, Requesting
Container UUID, Container UUID, Output UUID, Log UUID, and Modified By
User UUID. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19690">#19690</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/new-columns.png" title="Input and output parameter panels"><img src="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/new-columns.png" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="259" height="554"></a></p>
<p>Workbench 2’s left navigation pane is now collapsible. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19434">#19434</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/collapse-LHS.png" title="Collapse left side panel"><img src="https://www.arvados.org/images/release-notes/v2.5/collapse-LHS.png" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="320" height="346"></a></p>
<p>Workbench 2 fully supports frozen projects: projects can be frozen and
unfrozen, and frozen projects can’t be edited in any way. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/18692">#18692</a></p>
<p>When you maximize a Workbench 2 panel, there is now an un-maximize
button to easily restore the previous panels. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19300">#19300</a></p>
<h3 id="gmail-installer">Installer</h3>
<p>The Arvados installer includes a new script to manage the process of
setting up a fully-featured multi-node cluster. The <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/install/salt-multi-host.html">multi host
install guide</a>
guide has been rewritten, updated, and expanded. In addition, we now
provide a Terraform script to assist in deploying on AWS. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19175">#19175</a>
<a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19215">#19215</a></p>
<h3 id="gmail-client-tools">Client tools</h3>
<p><code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arv-mount</code> now features a memory-mapped disk-backed cache instead of
a pure RAM cache. This enables the cache to be much bigger by default
and leverage the kernel’s filesystem cache without competing with user
programs for RAM. The result is same or better performance reading
files without needing to tune cache parameters. This is available
both running <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arv-mount</code> locally and running containers on Arvados.
The size of the cache is controlled with <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">--file-cache</code> like before,
and the location is controlled with <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">--disk-cache-dir</code>. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/18842">#18842</a>
<a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19872">#19872</a></p>
<p><a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/user/debugging/container-shell-access.html"><code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arvados-client shell</code></a> can now connect to containers running under LSF
and SLURM, in addition to the cloud dispatcher. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19166">#19166</a></p>
<h3 id="gmail-running-workflows">Running Workflows</h3>
<p>Container records now have <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">cost</code> and <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">subrequest_cost</code> fields with
information about the container’s cost to run. See the <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/api/methods/containers.html">containers
reference</a>
for details. Container request records now have a <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">cumulative_cost</code>
field with information about the request’s total cost to run. See the
<a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/api/methods/container_requests.html">container requests reference</a>
for details. This is calculated using the <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">Price</code> field of the
instance type definition in the configuration file. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/18205">#18205</a></p>
<p>Workflow steps submitted by <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arvados-cwl-runner</code> now have properties
<code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">cwl_input</code> and <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">cwl_output</code> on the container request. See the <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/api/properties.html">API
properties documentation</a> for
details. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19466">#19466</a></p>
<h3 id="gmail-sdk">SDK</h3>
<p>The Python SDK documentation now includes a full <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/sdk/python/api-client.html">overview of how the
API client works</a>, with
lots of realistic examples for demonstration. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19791">#19791</a></p>
<p>The Python SDK features a disk-backed cache for Keep. This is used by
<code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arv-mount</code> as discussed above, but also available to other users of
the Python SDK. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/18842">#18842</a> <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19872">#19872</a></p>
<h3 id="gmail-administrator-tools">Administrator tools</h3>
<p>Arvados includes a new tool <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">sync-users-tool</code> to synchronize Arvados
user records described by a CSV file. You can use this to keep Arvados
user records up-to-date with other identity sources like Active
Directory or SSO providers. The <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/user/topics/arvados-sync-external-sources.html">admin guide on synchronizing</a>
has more details. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/18858">#18858</a></p>
<p><a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/admin/diagnostics.html"><code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arvados-client diagnostics</code></a> is
now documented in the admin guide. When possible, the diagnostics
also performs a cluster “health check” (<code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arvados-server check</code>
described below) and includes any problems in the diagnostics
report. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19364">#19364</a> <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19377">#19377</a></p>
<p><a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/admin/health-checks.html"><code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arvados-server check</code></a> is now
documented in the admin guide. The <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arvados-server check</code> tool now
detects and reports several likely error conditions on a cluster: when
different services in the cluster are not using the same
configuration; different services in the cluster are running from
different versions of Arvados; when clock times reported by different
services in the cluster are a minute apart or more. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/18794">#18794</a></p>
<h3 id="gmail-arvados-api">Arvados API</h3>
<p>The API server respects a new configuration option
<code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">Users.CanCreateRoleGroups</code>. If you set this false, non-admin users
will not be allowed to create role groups. This is helpful to set when
your cluster uses <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">arvados-group-sync</code> as the single source of
roles. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19513">#19513</a></p>
<p>The API server now allows sharing objects to be “writable” by the “All
Users” group. This entailed some changes to the permissions model for
roles: in general, updating a role now requires <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">can_manage</code>
permission. Refer to the <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/api/permission-model.html">API permissions model
documentation</a>
for details. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19269">#19269</a></p>
<p>Group objects returned by the API server now include boolean
<code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">can_manage</code> and <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">can_write</code> fields indicating the current user’s
level of access. The <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">writeable_by</code> field is now deprecated in favor
of these new fields. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19146">#19146</a></p>
<h3 id="gmail-keep">Keep</h3>
<p>If an unauthenticated user visits <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">keep-web</code> they will now be
redirected to Workbench 2 to log in first. Once the user is logged in,
they will be redirected back to <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">keep-web</code>. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/17807">#17807</a></p>
<p>Keepstore now uses a new driver for S3 driver by default. This driver
features improved S3 read performance. The old v1 driver will be
removed in Arvados 2.6.0. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19582">#19582</a></p>
<p>The <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">keep-web</code> S3 API now publishes project and collection properties
through the <code class="gmail-language-plaintext gmail-highlighter-rouge">X-Amz-Meta-</code> headers. Control characters in values are
MIME encoded. Refer to the new section in our <a href="https://doc.arvados.org/v2.5/api/keep-s3.html">S3 API
documentation</a> for
details. <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19088">#19088</a> <a href="https://dev.arvados.org/issues/19249">#19249</a></p><p><br></p><p>Thanks,</p><p>The Arvados Team<br></p></div>