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vME 1.9.0 Release Notes

· 5 min read
Jake Cave

What's New​

First-Time Setup Wizard​

New appliances now boot into a guided Setup Wizard that walks you through every first-run step in the browser: hostname, network (DHCP or static IP with DNS), timezone, TLS certificate, licence activation, admin password, authentication method, and the initial storage pool. There is no more manual bootstrapping over SSH.

Setup Wizard - Welcome

See the Setup Wizard guide for the full step-by-step walkthrough, including DHCP vs static IP networking and installing your own TLS certificate.

End-to-End iSCSI Agent Orchestration​

vME can now drive the SQL Server iSCSI workflow remotely and automatically. A lightweight Windows agent (installed from an MSI, run as a background service) enrols each SQL Server host with vME and then picks up and runs onboarding, migration, and clone mount/unmount jobs on demand - with no one logging in to run PowerShell.

Agents are managed centrally from the new Agent Manager in the web console: create one-time enrollment tokens, watch each agent's live status, and rotate keys - all over an outbound-only connection (port 443), so no inbound ports need to be opened on the SQL host.

Agent Manager - enrolling a new agent

See the iSCSI Connector - Automated (Windows Agent) guide for setup and usage.

Application Onboarding Wizard (Beta)​

A new Onboard Application wizard (Beta) guides you through cloning a production database onto another vME appliance end to end - pairing the two appliances, discovering the source host, and driving the iSCSI agent through prep, snapshot, clone, and mount. This is an early Beta; we'd love your feedback.

Onboard Application wizard - start

See Onboard Application (Beta) for the full workflow.

Container Connection Details​

vME now surfaces each database container's connection details - host, port mappings, mount paths, database type, and environment variables (such as POSTGRES_USER / POSTGRES_PASSWORD) - in the web UI, so you can connect to a running database without hunting for its settings. The container list API (GET /docker/container/list) returns the port mappings, mounts, database type, and environment variables as well.

Container list - Connection Info action

See Getting container connection info for details.

Consistent Snapshots​

When you snapshot a source or clone that has running database containers, vME now stops those containers first, takes the snapshot, and restarts them - so the captured data is consistent rather than mid-write. The UI shows a container-aware confirmation listing exactly what will be stopped.

See Snapshots for more info.

Rename Sources and Clones in the UI​

You can now rename sources and clones directly from the web console, instead of destroying and recreating them. (Renaming is not supported for iSCSI sources and clones.)

Rename button on a source or clone

Unix CLI Install​

The vME CLI can now be installed on Unix, in addition to Windows, so you can run it from the command line on either platform. The CLI is also up to date with the 1.9.0 API. See the CLI guide to download and install.

Improvements​

  • Clearer LDAP errors - a failed LDAP login now shows the actual error returned by the directory, instead of a generic message.
  • Licence errors surfaced - operations blocked by an unlicensed or expired appliance now show a clear licence error.
  • Longer sessions - the web session timeout has been extended to 24 hours.

Fixed Issues​

iSCSI connector

  • Snapshots now flush the LUN write cache before the snapshot is taken, so clones are no longer occasionally created RAW/empty.
  • Skip-backup no longer crashes when pointed at a single backup file.

Platform

  • Login now signs in correctly on the button press after a session timeout.
  • Fixed a UI refresh glitch when switching between menu items.
  • Fixed cross-appliance API calls failing due to certificate handling.
  • Resolved intermittent stale database-connection errors.

API Changes & Upgrading​

The 1.9.0 REST API is documented in the vME API reference. A few endpoints changed shape in this release - if you maintain a custom REST integration, review these before upgrading. (The vME web UI and CLI ship updated with the release and need no changes.)

Grab the updated vME Postman collection to get all the new and changed endpoints ready to run - it also includes an Onboarding (API) folder that replicates the full Onboard Application flow as ordered, chained requests.

Breaking changes

  • POST /user/modify now requires your current_password, and a password change is sent as a structured object: 
    - { "username": "jane", "password": "NewPass456!" }
    + {
    +   "username": "jane",
    +   "current_password": "OldPass123!",
    +   "password": { "current": "OldPass123!", "new": "NewPass456!", "confirm": "NewPass456!" }
    + }
  • DELETE /user/delete now requires your password and a typed confirmation: 
    - { "username": "ubuntu123" }
    + { "username": "ubuntu123", "password": "MyPassword123!", "confirm_text": "DELETE ubuntu123" }
  • POST /db/receive is now asynchronous - it returns 202 Accepted with a task_id. Poll GET /tasks/<task_id> for completion instead of expecting a synchronous result.

New and improved

  • New endpoints: POST /db/send/cancel, POST /user/changepass, POST /db/network/create, DELETE /db/network/delete, and GET /tasks/<task_id>.
  • iSCSI sources & clones over the API: POST /source/create and POST /clone/create accept a network_info block (type: iscsi, with auto_grow / vsize), and the iSCSI target is provisioned automatically as part of creation.
  • System-to-system db send no longer needs an SSH/PEM key - vME establishes trust with the receiver automatically using its admin api-key.