SL1 PowerFlow Platform Release Notes, version 2.6.0

SL1 PowerFlow Platform version 2.6.0 includes updates to Couchbase, RabbitMQ, and Celery; updates to the powerflowcontrol (pfctl) utility; enhancements to the PowerFlow user interface; a new OpenTelemetry PowerFlow application; and other improvements.

Unless mentioned elsewhere in the documentation, PowerFlow SyncPacks do not require a specific version of the PowerFlow Platform.

Features

This section covers the features that are included in SL1 PowerFlow Platform version 2.6.0.

Updates to Couchbase, RabbitMQ, and Celery

  • This release of the PowerFlow Platform includes Couchbase version 6.6.0, which is a substantial upgrade from Couchbase version 6.0.2. As a result, please review the considerations in the "Upgrading to Couchbase Version 6.6.0" topic in the PowerFlow Platform manual.
  • To troubleshoot issues with Couchbase or RabbitMQ, you can temporarily expose Couchbase or RabbitMQ ports without requiring Dex authentication. For more information, see the "Troubleshooting" chapter in the PowerFlow Platform manual.
  • Added a new configuration for Celery to the docker-compose file that lets you send a task ID to the broker and load the task data from redis. You can set this new configuration by adding the broker_load_from_backend environment variable. If you set this variable to True, Celery will save the payload it would have sent through the broker (RabbitMQ, SQS) and sends it to the backend (redis) instead, reducing the size of the message. When set to False, Celery will work as it normally does. The default value for this setting is False.

Updates to the PowerFlow User Interface

  • Added a set of filters for the columns for the inventory pages (pages that display lists of items) in the PowerFlow user interface. You can start typing filter text or select filter options in one or more of these filters to narrow down the items in the list to view just the items you want to view.
  • On the detail page for a SyncPack on the SyncPacks page, the Package Contents section was updated to display more details about the steps, applications, and configuration objects include with that SyncPack:
    • The Applications tab includes a link to the detail page for each application, along with a list of steps in the application (with the option of clicking the step name to view the code for that step), and a thumbnail image of the workflow for the application.
    • The Steps tab includes a link to the Step Code dialog for each step, along with a list of any applications that are using that step. You can also click the name of the application from the list to go to the detail page for that application.
    • The Configurations tab includes a link to the detail page for each configuration object, along with a list of any PowerFlow applications that are aligned with that configuration object (with the option of clicking the application name to view the detail page for that application).
  • Added an "Auto Refresh" counter that lets you see when data will update to the following pages: SyncPacks, Applications, Configurations, and API Keys. On these pages, you can also click "Auto Refresh" to refresh the page immediately.
  • Pop-up messages have a countdown timer that displays until it closes, along with a Close icon.
  • When you are scheduling a application, the name of that application now appears at the top left of the Scheduler window.

Updates to the PowerFlow Control Tower Page

  • Added RabbitMQ data and charts to the System Health widget.

  • Added the Connection_widget field to the "PowerFlow Check Connections" application in the "System Utils" SyncPack, which is included with this release of PowerFlow. You can use the new "steps" key in the Connection_widget field to filter the data that displays on the Workflow Health and Interconnectivity widget on the PowerFlow Control Tower page:

    • When this field is present, the application filters for runs that used the "test" configuration object.
    • When this field is blank, the application filters for apps that did not have a configuration object aligned.
    • When the field is left out, the application does not filter, and it fetches and processes all runs regardless of the configuration objects (which is how the application worked by default in previous versions).

    For example, in the Connection_widget field, you can add the following JSON code to display the latest application run with the "test" configuration object, and the application will only show successful or failed runs with that configuration object:

            {
          "name": "Integration Template",
          "steps": [
            {
              "app_name": "integration_template",
              "step_name": "Get REST Test",
              "configuration": "test",
              "syncpack": "base_steps_syncpack"
            }
          ]
        }

Updates to Configuration Objects

  • In the "IS - System Backup Configuration Example" configuration object, the default value of the backup_destination field was set to /usr/tmp.
  • The Configurations page now lists configuration objects with their "user-friendly" names instead of the system IDs used by the API.

Updates to the powerflowcontrol (pfctl) Command-line Utility

The latest version of the powerflowcontrol (pfctl) command-line utility, version 2.7.6 includes the following updates:

  • Updated the pfctl utility so that only one instance of the utility can be run at the same time in the same stack.
  • Improved error handling when the powerflowcontrol (pfctl) utility encounters a timeout when querying the pypiserver.
  • The healthcheck action can detect duplicate versions of the "Activate Syncpack" and "Install Syncpack" steps, and the autoheal action deletes the duplicates.
  • The healthcheck action checks the /var and /tmp directories on all nodes and raises an alert if either of the directories are at more than 91% capacity. (Case: 00303742)
  • The healthcheck action can detect if any RabbitMQ queues are out of sync or missing a policy, and the autoheal action will sync those queues. These actions also detect and fix custom queues. If the actions cannot fix the queues automatically, the pfctl utility will display the steps to address the issue manually.
  • Added a cluster action to the healthcheck action that gathers data from docker stats on each node.
  • The autocluster action was updated to fix additional issues, including issues with the docker-compose file.
  • You can check the installed pfctl version by running: pfctl --version. You can also view the current PowerFlow version and the installed pfctl version if you add --json at the start of the healthcheck command.
  • Added additional autoheal and create_node_indexes steps to the "Troubleshooting Clustering and Node Failover" topic in the Troubleshooting SL1 PowerFlow chapter of the SL1 PowerFlow Platform manual.

Do not use version 2.7.5 of the powerflowcontrol (pfctl) command-line utility. To download and install version 2.7.6, see Installing the powerflowcontrol (pfctl) utility.

Additional Features

  • Added the "Collect PowerFlow OTEL Metrics" application to the "PowerFlow Check Connections" application in the "System Utils" SyncPack, which is included with this release of PowerFlow. This application collects basic PowerFlow OpenTelemetry content metrics, including:

    • The number of applications, steps, configuration objects, and SyncPacks.
    • The number of applications run during the last day.
    • Data about all of the content in the current PowerFlow system, including names and versions of all steps, configuration objects, and SyncPacks.
    • Platform services versions.

    You can use this application to send the collected metrics and PowerFlow content to a metrics server in JSON format. You can also use this application to send those metrics to a OTEL collector using a OTEL GRPC endpoint, which is configurable as an application variable. For more information, see the SL1 PowerFlow manual. These features are disabled by default.

  • You can run a GET api/v1/status operation that retrieves all the health status cache documents without running the "PowerFlow Control Tower HealthCheck" application.

  • Updated the GET /api/v1/status operation to give you the option of retrieving all health metrics for a specific service, including the following services: contentapi, couchbase, dexserver, iservices_syncpack_steprunner, iservices_syncpacks_steprunner, pfctl_output, rabbitmq, redis, steprunner.

    For example: GET https://<PowerFlow_site>/api/v1/status/redis.

  • The following services are included in this release of PowerFlow:

    • contentapi. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-api:rhel2.6.0
    • couchbase. image: image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-couchbase:6.6.0-9
    • dexserver. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-dex:2.22.0-5
    • flower. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-worker:rhel2.6.0
    • gui. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-gui:2.6.0-rc1-ubi7
    • pypiserver. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-pypi:6.3.1-9
    • rabbitmq. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-rabbit:3.8.35-3
    • redis. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-redis:6.2.7-2
    • scheduler. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-worker:rhel2.6.0
    • steprunner. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-worker:rhel2.6.0
    • syncpacks_steprunner. image: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-worker:rhel2.6.0

Issues Addressed

The following issues were addressed in this release:

  • Addressed an issue where the powerflowcontrol (pfctl) version was downgraded during a PowerFlow upgrade. (Case: 00328661) (Jira ID: INT-5473)
  • Addressed an issue where the healthcheck action generated false positives when LOAD_BALANCER: yes is set in the isconfig.yml file for a three-node cluster. (Case: 00344031) (Jira ID: INT-4169)
  • A number of updates were made to address and prevent potential security vulnerabilities. (Jira IDs: EM-58385, EM-58387, EM-58388, EM-58389)

Known Issues

This release contains the following known issues:

  • When upgrading to Couchbase version 6.6.0, the number of documents in the logs bucket could make the upgrade take longer, as a namespace upgrade is needed. ScienceLogic recommends that you flush the logs bucket if there are more than 300,000 documents that are taking up close to 2 GB of space in every node. Flushing the logs bucket will speed up the upgrade process. Otherwise, migrating a logs bucket of that size would take two to three minutes per node.

    Run the following command to flush the logs bucket after the PowerFlow version 2.6.0 RPM was installed, but before redeploying the PowerFlow Stack:

    pfctl --host <hostname> <username>:<password> node-action --action flush_logs_bucket

    Alternately, you can flush the logs bucket manually using the Couchbase user interface.

  • For upgrades from PowerFlow version 2.2.x systems that have the localpkg_gpgcheck=1option enabled in /etc/yum.conf, the SL RPM Public Key is required. Please contact your ScienceLogic Customer Success Manager (CSM) or create a new Service Request case at https://support.sciencelogic.com/s in the "PowerFlow" category to request access to that key.
  • To avoid authentication issues, do not use the dollar sign ($) character as the first character in any of the passwords related to PowerFlow. You can use the $ character elsewhere in the password if needed.
  • In PowerFlow version 2.4.0 and later, if you enabled the latest authentication updates for the backend services, the RabbitMQ API is no longer available externally from the cluster. As a result, remote API requests directly to RabbitMQ might not work (the RabbitMQ user interface is still completely operational). As a workaround, if you require remote access to the RabbitMQ API, you can return to legacy behavior by setting the following gui environment variable: force_auth_validation: true. Alternatively, you may perform any api requests to rabbit directly from within the container. Remote RabbitMQ API access for internal authentication users will be enabled in a future release of PowerFlow.
  • The Workflow Health and Interconnectivity widget on the PowerFlow Control Tower page displays diagrams for PowerFlow applications and SyncPacks that have been deleted. To work around this issue, run the "PowerFlow Control Tower HealthCheck" application or wait for the next scheduled run of the application.
  • If your PowerFlow system uses self-signed certificates, you will need to manually accept the certificate before you can upload SyncPacks. Go to https://<IP address of PowerFlow>:3141/isadmin, accept the certificate, and then log into PowerFlow. After you log in, you will be able to upload SyncPacks.
  • The latest tag does not exist after the initial ISO installation. This situation only affects users with custom services that point to the latest tag. To work around this issue, run the tag latest script manually after running the ./pull_start_iservices.sh command:

python /opt/iservices/scripts/system_updates/tag_latest.py /opt/iservices/scripts/docker-compose.yml

System Requirements

PowerFlow Platform version 2.2.1 and later requires version 1.3.1 or later of the "Base Steps" SyncPack. This version includes an update to the "Query REST" step that prevents issues with scheduled PowerFlow applications.

You can download the latest version of this SyncPack from the PowerPacks page of the ScienceLogic Support Site.

The PowerFlow builder is available as part of an SL1 Premium solution. To upgrade, contact ScienceLogic Customer Support. For more information, see https://sciencelogic.com/pricing.

The PowerFlow platform does not have a specific minimum required version for SL1 or AP2. However, certain SyncPacks for PowerFlow have minimum version dependencies, which are listed on the Dependencies for SL1 PowerFlow SyncPacks page.

Ports

The following table lists the PowerFlow ingress requirements:

Source Port Purpose

SL1 host

443

SL1 run book actions and connections to PowerFlow

User client

3141

Devpi access

User client

443

PowerFlow API

User client

5556

Dex Server: enable authentication for PowerFlow

User client

8091

Couchbase Dashboard

User client

15672

RabbitMQ Dashboard

User client

22

SSH access

The following table lists the PowerFlow egress requirements:

Destination Port Purpose

SL1 host

7706

Connecting PowerFlow to SL1Database Server

SL1 host

443

Connecting PowerFlow to SL1 API

Additional Considerations

Review the following list of considerations and settings before installing PowerFlow:

  • ScienceLogic highly recommends that you disable all firewall session-limiting policies. Firewalls will drop HTTPS requests, which results in data loss.
  • Starting with PowerFlow version 3.0.0, the minimum storage size for the initial partitions is 60 GB. Anything less will cause the automated installation to stop and wait for user input. You can use the tmux application to navigate to the other panes and view the logs. In addition, at 100 GB and above, PowerFlow will no longer allocate all of the storage space, so you will need to allocate the rest of the space based on your specific needs.
  • PowerFlow clusters do not support vMotion or snapshots while the cluster is running. Performing a vMotion or snapshot on a running PowerFlow cluster will cause network interrupts between nodes, and will render clusters inoperable.
  • The site administrator is responsible for configuring the host, hardware, and virtualization configuration for the PowerFlow server or cluster. If you are running a cluster in a VMware environment, be sure to install open-vm-tools and disable vMotion.
  • You can configure one or more SL1 systems to use PowerFlow to sync with a single instance of a third-party application like ServiceNow or Cherwell. You cannot configure one SL1 system to use PowerFlow to sync with multiple instances of a third-party application like ServiceNow or Cherwell. The relationship between SL1 and the third-party application can be either one-to-one or many-to-one, but not one-to-many.
  • The default internal network used by PowerFlow services is 172.21.0.1/16. Please ensure that this range does not conflict with any other IP addresses on your network. If needed, you can change this subnet in the docker-compose.yml file.

For more information about system requirements for your PowerFlow environment, see the System Requirements page at the ScienceLogic Support site at https://support.sciencelogic.com/s/system-requirements.

Installing or Upgrading PowerFlow

For detailed steps about installing or upgrading to this version of PowerFlow, see Installing and Configuring PowerFlow.

You should always upgrade to the most recent release of PowerFlow.