September Quality of Life Updates
September brings a set of smaller improvements across Edge and Cluster: a serial console for Edge, VirtIO drivers that arrive on their own, a clearer networking model, a guest clock setting for Windows, better visibility into virtual disk health, and a faster Console.
Serial Console on Edge
The serial console that arrived for Cluster and Standalone in June is now on Edge. Select Serial Console on a Linux VM’s dashboard to get a terminal attached to the VM’s serial port, tunneled to your browser through the Gallium Console. It works with no network inside the guest, so you can watch boot messages and log in to a VM you cannot otherwise reach. VMs created from Gallium’s Linux templates need no setup.
Read more in the Console Access documentation.
VirtIO Drivers Included on Edge
Windows VMs on Edge no longer need the VirtIO driver ISO fetched and attached by hand. Edge now supplies the drivers automatically, so a Windows install from ISO is possible without extra steps.
Networks and Network Adapters on Edge
Edge networking now has two clearly separated objects to bring it in line with Standalone and Cluster. Network Adapters are the physical ports in the server. Networks are where a virtual machine interface attaches.
Read more in the Networking Overview.
Configurable Guest Clock for Windows VMs.
Windows VMs that weren’t connected to a Domain could have time syncronization issues with the virtual clock defaulting to UTC. A new Guest Clock setting lets you set the Time Zone the virtual clock runs in. Available on Edge, Standalone, and Cluster
Virtual Disk Health in Cluster
Each virtual disk in a Cluster now reports the health of its copies individually. The disk shows how many of its desired copies are healthy, and when a copy is being rebuilt after a physical disk or node is lost the disk reports Rebuilding rather than leaving you to infer it. A disk with fewer healthy copies than it should have shows Degraded in the list view.
Console Performance
The Gallium Console loads faster and responds sooner to changes in virtual machine state, with the biggest gains over higher latency connections and in larger deployments.