Foreman 1.6.0 released!
After some testing in late August with the release candidate versions, Foreman 1.6.0 is out! Some of the highlights are:
- Smart Proxy plugins support
- API v2 is now declared stable, will be the default in 1.7.0
- External user groups for LDAP and Kerberos group support
- Support for RHEL7 (CentOS and Scientific will be supported when SCL 1.1 becomes available)
- Configurable and extensible dashboard
- Puppet directory environment support
The full list of release notes can be found in the manual, as usual. There are two CVEs explained in the security advisories and scheduled to be fixed in 1.6.1.
New plugins
foreman_graphite adds graphite support for your Foreman infrastructure instances. Configure where to send your performance metrics through a YAML file.
hammer-cli-foreman-ssh gives Hammer parallel remote execution for your nodes in Foreman. Authentication is done through SSH keys and parameters to filter subsets of hosts are available.
Rundeck support will be moved out of core for 1.7. foreman_host_rundeck will allow users to get a YAML representation of hosts for Rundeck.
foreman_salt provides node classification in Salt, and an interface for Salt keys, highstate runs and more. It needs to run with a smart proxy plugin as well. Setup instructions are in the wiki.
foreman_abrt provides reports forwarding to ABRT, also needs to run with a plugin in smart proxy.
hammer_cli_foreman_bootdisk gives Hammer a set of commands for foreman_bootdisk a plugin to Foreman for ISO/USB booting support.
FOSS outreach program and Foreman
Foreman will be again taking an intern for the December-March cycle of the FOSS outreach program (formerly OPW). You can find more information about the program here. Here are the proposed projects, you are welcome in #theforeman in libera.chat to ask questions.
Featured media
Mitchell Anicas wrote a great tutorial on how to setup Foreman 1.5 to manage an installation of Ubuntu 14.04 nodes. It is part of a series on Puppet and Configuration management. Check it out in the DigitalOcean community site.
We also discovered recently an article by Anthony Lapenna on Foreman and Puppet infrastructure setup, the scalable way. Check it out if you want ideas for a solid Foreman and Puppet infrastructure.
Sprint 29 demo was recently published, if you want to follow the latest from the Foreman development team. It covers EFI and QEMU setup in Foreman, bond and fencing network devices support, foreman_host_rundeck, foreman_graphite, hammer-cli-foreman-ssh, changes in the code base to use gem friendly_id and puppet server support.