VMware Blockchain 1.8 Release Notes

What's New

VMware Blockchain is an enterprise-grade blockchain platform that meets the needs of business-critical multi-party workflows. The VMware Blockchain 1.8 release includes the following new support and enhancements:

Security Improvements

Descriptor File Password Encryption 

VMware Blockchain encrypts the passwords in the descriptor files using Ansible Vault. 

Cryptographic Libraries Alignment with OpenSSL 

As an enterprise-grade blockchain, VMware Blockchain uses trusted, stable, well-maintained, and supported cryptographic libraries that meet the necessary performance requirements. In addition, these cryptographic libraries are aligned to use Open SSL, which is FIPS-compliant.  

Active Directory Integration

Active Directory (AD) and LDAP capability for admin authorization allow the VMware Blockchain nodes and Orchestration appliance to be integrated within an enterprise production environment and provide authentication services. The integration also enables AD accounts to be utilized instead of using local accounts and extra password controls. 

Capacity Management Improvements 

Pruning 

Pruning with disk compression allows users to manage the disk space used by the Replica nodes and free up disk resources. 

Workload Resource Optimization

Resource optimization for lower-end workloads helps users reduce infrastructure costs. For lower-end workloads, the memory, vCPUs, and other VM resources are set to a minimum configuration, which does not exceed 32 GB per VM. 

Upgrade Enhancement

In-Place-Based Upgrade

Improves the overall upgrade experience in data continuity, migration, configuration continuity, upgrade duration, and reduces implementation steps.  

Observability Improvements 

Logging

The logging mechanism minimizes any impact on performance and quickly identifies runtime issues. In addition, logs are now persistent and contain the debugging information for critical events such as view change, failure, or error messages. 

Component Versions

The supported domain versions include:

Domain	Version
Build	1.8.0.0.53
VMware Blockchain Platform	1.8
VMware Blockchain Orchestrator	1.8
DAML SDK	2.4.0-0.1
Photon OS	4.19.256-1.ph3

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Upgrade Considerations

• For vSphere environments, implement the in-place-based upgrade process when upgrading from VMware Blockchain 1.7 to 1.8. See the Perform In-Place-Based Upgrade on vSphere instructions in the Using and Managing VMware Blockchain Guide.

• For AWS environments, implement the clone-based upgrade when upgrading from VMware Blockchain 1.7 to 1.8. See the Perform Clone-Based Upgrade on AWS instructions in the Using and Managing VMware Blockchain Guide.

Resolved Issues

• New - Replica node might fail due to a synchronization issue in the preprocessor

  In some instances, the pre-process request handling in the primary Replica node might be interrupted by a PreProcessReplyMsg message for the same request causing invalid processing and leading to failure.

• New - When running VMware Blockchain with a maximum supported 50 transactions per second (TPS) for DAML with constrained compute resources for Replica node VMs, the system might exhibit fluctuations in the transaction processing rate

  Concord container request processing goes through multiple stages, and the fluctuations might be related to the pre-processing phase. In the case of a computationally constrained environment, the raw memory pool component might add an unexpected overhead to the overall execution time, thus resulting in TPS rate fluctuations.

• New - Required Paramiko module is missing from the VMware Blockchain Orchestrator appliance

  The VMware Blockchain Orchestrator appliance uses the Paramiko module to generate blockchain node and Concord container logs to identify errors and debug problems. The missing module causes the support bundle collection to fail.

• New - Small form factor for Client node groups in AWS deployment is not supported

  With the introduction of client services, a Client node requires 32 GB minimum memory allocation. The small form factor uses the M4.xlarge instance type, which provides 16 GB of memory. 

Known Issues

• New - Reconfiguration operation does not work with the USB HSM manager

  When nodes with USB HSM manager are scaled, the Reconfigure operation does not work. 

  Workaround: None

• New - Transaction per second (TPS) degradation might occur after a Replica node is powered off for several minutes and restarted

  If the Concord container is stopped for several minutes and restarted, the blockchain network might experience some degradation in TPS.

  Workaround: Restart the Concord containers on all Replica nodes in the Replica Network.

• New - In rare cases, a failed Client node cannot be restarted after the Replica nodes are pruned

  If one of the Client nodes fails while the blockchain is processing transactions from other Client nodes and pruning is performed on the Replica nodes before the Client node is recovered. In this case, the number of blocks pruned exceeds the blocks the Client node had received. As a result, the Client node fails to restart.

  Workaround: If the Client node is shut down gracefully using an agent, the failed Client node can be restarted after pruning.

• New - In-place-based upgrade script cannot run in the background for an extended period

   If the in-place-based upgrade script takes longer than 15 mins to run, and the SSH session is not kept alive, the script terminates, and the upgrade fails.

  Workaround: Keep the SSH session alive by periodically pressing Enter on the upgrade script's terminal window. Alternatively, increase the ClientAliveInterval value in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and reboot the VM before running the script.

• New - Performing an automated clone-based upgrade with a large RocksDB database increases the Daml sanity testing timeframe

  Daml sanity testing requires added time after an automated clone-based upgrade with a large RocksDB database of approximately 50 GB due to the reconstruction of the RVB data structure.

  Workaround: After performing a clone-based upgrade, wait for the RVB data structure to be constructed completely. Check the Concord container and Daml Ledger API logs to confirm that the Replica nodes are ready.

• New - In some instances, the Daml Ledger API log rotation fails on the Client node

  The /var/lib/docker folder on the Client node creates multiple temporary files and runs out of storage space for new log files. 

  Workaround: Manually delete some or all of the temporary files under the /var/lib/docker/containers/<container-id>/ folder.

• Concord container gets restarted due to excessive memory usage

  When a Concord container process reaches the maximum memory limit, the process is stopped, which causes the container to restart. The problem is likely to occur in high-load transaction scenarios running for several days.

  Workaround: None

• Wavefront metrics do not appear after the network interface is deactivated and re-enabled on Replica nodes

  This problem was observed while executing a test case that explicitly deactivated the network interface on Replica nodes and rarely manifested in a production environment.

  Workaround: Restart the telegraf container by running the command docker restart telegraf wavefront-proxy for the metrics to appear in Wavefront.