2010-12-16

Cost Quota Alerts for the Enterprise

A user with 'enterprise_manager' user role privileges can define specific cost quotas for each child account within the Enterprise and receive email alert notifications when one of the accounts approaches or exceeds the defined quota.  This feature is designed to help Enterprise Managers better manage and account for the cloud usage costs associated with each RightScale account within the Enterprise.  This feature is supported in Enterprise Editions. To learn more, see Add a Quota to an Enterprise Account.  (bl-11656)

New User Role: 'security_manager'

A new user role was introduced to provide more granular user permission control for security purposes. In order to create or edit an EC2/RDS Security Group, you now need to have the 'security_manager' user role privilege.  Previously, you only needed 'actor' user role privileges to create a Security Group or modify an existing Security Group's port permissions.  To learn more, see User Roles.  (az-17308)

Note: Existing users with 'actor' privileges are automatically granted the new role of 'security_manager'. It is recommended that the admin examine the list of existing users and decide which users should continue to be allowed the privileges of 'security_manager'.

Support for creating an EC2 SSH Key with your own key material

Previously, only Amazon could create a valid SSH Key that you could use inside EC2.  When you created a SSH Key, Amazon would keep the public key material and send you a copy of the matching private key material.  You now have the additional option of importing a public key to Amazon and selecting that key when starting a Server within the RightScale Dashboard.  See Create a New SSH Key by Importing an RSA Key Pair.  (gr-14377)

Temporary RightScale Account Access

You now have the ability to grant a user temporary access to a RightScale account. When sending account invitations to a user, you can now define how many days a user will have a certain role within a RightScale account.  Requires 'admin' user role privileges.  To learn more, see Invite Users to a RightScale Account.  (bl-14402) 

Support for VLAN Port Forwarding Rules

Port forwarding is used to enable communications by external hosts with services offered within a VLAN (virtual local area network) in a cloud.  The RightScale Dashboard supports configuration of Port Forwarding Rules for the clouds that have port forwarding capabilities.  The more standard networking mode using Security Groups is of course unaffected and still fully supported.  Additional documentation on Port Forwarding Rules will be released shortly.  To learn more, see Port Forwarding Rules.  (or-16281)

RightLink v5.6 Release

RightLink v5.6 is the first release since the v5.5 GA (General Availability) release and includes various bug fixes.  The problem where audit entries were occasionally listed out of order was fixed as part of this. The latest release also supports our new source code repository mirroring service (see next entry below).  

Repository Mirroring Service

A RightScale mirroring service that automatically mirrors Chef cookbook source-code repositories referenced in RightScale RepoPaths. To learn more, see Repose. (az-16292)

Support for Read Replicas (Amazon RDS)

RightScale now supports the ability to launch Read Replicas for RDS.  RDS is an additional service from Amazon Web that you must sign-up for before you can launch RDS instances.  To learn more, see RDS Instances.  (gr-11845)

Audit Entries generated for Security Group modifications

Audit entries will now be generated when security groups are modified.  Audit entry details will show who modified the security group, when the modification occurred, and a listing of the previous and updated rules.

RightScale API Changes

The Instances call for a Server Array resource now exports two new attributes: 'monitoring_base_url' and 'monitoring_token'.  See Server Arrays.

Ability to categorize RightScale components in the Publishing Assistant

Previously, you did not have the ability to categorize RightScale components (e.g. ServerTemplates, RightScripts, etc.) when you publish a RightScale component.   The Publishing Assistant that is used to publish and share RightScale components now has a Categories section.  The new Categories section is a part of the Description step.  To learn more, see Using the Publishing Assistant.  (bl-16416)

Removal of Bandwidth Estimates from Usage Reports

Previously, we displayed estimated bandwidth costs for AWS in the Usage Reports (Reports -> Usage Estimate).  However, it is too difficult to provide accurate estimates for this AWS usage charge, so the report has been removed.  (bl-14612)

Deleting Alerts from ServerTemplates Affecting Terminated Instances

When deleting an alert in a HEAD ServerTemplate, the corresponding server alerts from all instances and servers using that ServerTemplate were deleted, as well as for terminated instances.  It's important to accurately preserve a server's alert configurations at the time of termination.   Alerts for terminated instances are no longer affected when alerts are deleted from a HEAD ServerTemplate. (ac-8591)

Degraded Overview and Deployments Performance

Previously, the Overview and Deployments tabs in the Dashboard were not optimized.  The performance was heavily degraded. This has been resolved with a more efficient query solution. (bl-7868)

RDS Instances Gem Code Not Synced with API

Previously, the RDS instances gem code was not properly synced up with the current RightScale API version. This problem has been resolved. They are now in-sync.   (gr-8252)

RSS feed internal error

The 'Enable RSS' button on the User Preferences page (Settings -> User -> Preferences tab) was pointing to the MultiCloud Marketplace, but the one on the left pane navigation was not. This problem has been resolved. (blk-8467)

Invitations 'Filter by Email' Error

In the Invitations tab (Settings -> Account), using the 'Filter by Email' function was returning a permission error. The filter has been fixed. (bl-8570)

Searching Tags via API internal error

Previously, searching tags through the API was causing an internal error if the tag existed on a server array instance. This issue has been resolved. (gr-8661)