Liferay Cloud 2023.Q3 Updates

Note: please note that Liferay has renamed its Liferay Experience Could offerings to Liferay SaaS (formerly LXC) and Liferay PaaS (formerly LXC-SM).

We're thrilled to unveil our Q3 releases, bringing together our vision of innovation and user-centric enhancements for the Liferay Cloud platform. Here are the major additions and improvements to the Liferay Cloud platform:

1. Unified (CX <> DXP) Cloud Console Logging: Combined Client Extension and DXP logs, presented in a unified interface for a streamlined experience. Details
2. Private Service Connect: Establish secure, dedicated pathways specifically tailored for Kubernetes services. Also, use Cloud interconnect as a bridge to a more secure, low-latency connection from on-premises networks to Google Cloud. Details
3. Azure Git Repos Integration: Integrate with Azure DevOps, leveraging Jenkins for an optimized DevOps experience. Details
4. Log Management UI Enhancements: Return of dark mode, cleaner log lines, and a more responsive layout. Details
5. LCP.json Configurations Display: Show LCP.json configurations of each build, enhancing transparency and troubleshooting capabilities. Details
6. HostAlias Customization: Granular control over your application’s networking by customizing hostname-to-IP mappings in container pods. Details
7. VPN Enhancements:
   1. Choose between UDP and TCP protocols for flexible communication.
   2. Boost security with the PreShared-key (PSK) authentication.
   3. Elevate your VPN setup with OpenVPN Peer Validation using your own TLS certificate. Details

Below you can see a breakdown of all the changes we've made this quarter:

Added

• LCD-27088 View DXP Logs on the Cloud Console
  
• LCD-29957 Include Elasticsearch 8 Liferay Cloud service image
• LCD-26010 capability for users to customize the /etc/hosts file of their container pods via the LCP.json configuration. This enhancement, achieved through the new hostAliases property, provides a seamless method for users to establish custom hostname-to-IP mappings. 
  

  {
     "hostAliases":[{
        "ip":"10.XX.XX.XXX",
        "hostnames":["customdomain.example.com"]
     }]
  }

• LCD-26087 Realtime support chat for customers that have Support Admin Role on Liferay's Customer Portal.
• LCD-27134 Display build inspector
  
• LCD-29281 & LCD-30260 Integrated Google Cloud's Private Service Connect with Cloud Interconnect for enhanced Kubernetes service connectivity in Liferay Cloud.
• LCD-29588 Update CLI to list the --extension parameter in order to deploy a zip file containing client extensions.
  

  lcp deploy --extension [extension-zip-file]

• LCD-30320 Introduced "lcp auth token" command in CLI for enhanced script integration and token retrieval. Uselcp auth token and it should print the authentication token.
• LCD-30359 Configure AzureDevOps SCM Source on Jenkins
• LCD-28358 Set the default log date filter to today to enhance load speed, resulting in up to an 80% performance boost in certain instances.
• LCD-29160 Add option to upload client's TLS certificate and key when creating an OpenVPN server
  
  
  
• LCD-29755 In response to user feedback, we've rolled out a series of enhancements to the Console Logs page UI. These updates include the reintroduction of horizontal scrolling, a dark mode color scheme for the Log Viewer, streamlined log line presentation with reduced height and eliminated line dividers, and an optimized column layout prioritizing Level, Time, Service, and Message for better readability. Additionally, the interface now offers a "fluid" layout size option for a more adaptable view. These changes are designed to improve user experience.
  
• LCD-24303 Update Project's page to list a summary of each project
• LCD-27747 Improve load time performance of the Activities page
• LCD-28501 In the backup service image 5.0.0, we've introduced the PREPARE_AND_SWAP restore strategy, which will now be set as the default Restore Strategy for enhanced performance and reliability. While the OVERWRITE strategy will remain available as an optional choice for a transitional period, our aim is to transition all users – particularly new customers and those in test/dev environments – to the more efficient PREPARE_AND_SWAP method. Please note that in our upcoming Backup solution, the OVERWRITE strategy will no longer be supported, signaling our move towards more robust backup solutions.
• Enhanced backup operations with several improvements, including clearer CLI hints, refined error messages, optimized logging, and advanced download file management for better user experience and data integrity.
  
• Refined Backup activity displays to provide more relevant information, replacing environmental names with specific backupId details for enhanced clarity, standardizing activity notifications, and ensuring users are adequately informed about which backup operations are being performed.
  
  
• Enhanced the backups page to include a clipboard feature, allowing users to effortlessly copy backupIds, facilitating smoother troubleshooting and streamlined CLI backup operations.
  
• Optimized the disable route to reduce response times from over 20 seconds, likely due to admin email notifications, ensuring a swifter user experience when disabling autoscale.
• Introduced an improved method to separately download and process tar files, enhancing the efficiency and stability of large backup restorations. By conducting rigorous testing on various bandwidths and memory limits, the initiative aims to identify optimal conditions that prevent system failures, such as out-of-memory errors, while ensuring smooth backup and restoration processes.
•  

Improvements

• LCD-29287 Removed "All Logs" filter from Console Logs for both performance reasons and low feature usage 
• LCD-28126 Improved backup resilience for large scale backups. 1Tb or more.
• LCD-26731 Refined Backup Restoration: Schemas are now dropped when restoring automatic backups, preventing potential conflicts during DXP updates. This change ensures a smoother transition between different updates and a more reliable backup restoration experience.
• Limit API autoscale to DXP services
• Increase timeout on logs routes to avoid terminating logs download logs requests

Bug Fixes

• LCD-30881 Unable to connect to VPN using openvpn with TLS cert/key
• LCD-30883 The database service does not support changes to the max_allowed_packet database flag
• LCD-30506 LCP CLI repeats most recent log line
• LCD-30787 Unreadable JSON logs in Jenkins console of Pull Request Test Runner, when it should be human readable text logs
• LCD-29875 Backup restore of user uploaded database files would sometimes silently fail and remove the lportal database without reporting any problems to the user
• LCD-30582 Shell tab should be hidden for some services
• LCD-30601 Custom domains input should be disabled for Guest
• LCD-30616 Unable to create environment in different cluster from root project
• LCD-28127 [CI] Create Liferay Cloud Build stage fails
• LCD-29227 Query Insights should not be auto enabled for existing customers
• LCD-30129 Builds page does not show the builds
• LCD-29450 In the recent update to the backup service, we've addressed an interruption issue that occurred when uploading large backup files taking longer than 5 minutes. Users experienced their uploads being prematurely terminated, with server logs indicating an "Error: aborted". This behavior was traced back to a default 5-minute request timeout introduced in Node v18 as a countermeasure against DOS attacks. We've now optimized our service to handle extended upload times, ensuring that users can reliably upload large backup files without interruptions.
• Removed the Status Alert field from the Alert Preferences page to enhance clarity and user experience until a comprehensive solution is implemented.
  
• Resolved an issue where user passwords were being logged in debug mode on GCP's liferaycloud project, ensuring sensitive information is no longer exposed in provisioning container logs.
• Addressed vulnerability by correcting 'access-control-allow-origin: *' misconfiguration on multiple prod resources, preventing potential unauthorized cross-origin requests.
• Fixed an issue where the Liferay PaaS cluster backup restore process consistently halted at 85.83%, hindering configuration changes and hotfix implementations for the production environment.
• Fixed backup service does not retry when rate limit for 'cloud sql admin api' is reached
• On simple file system backup, creating a backup with no files can hang forever
• Logs do not load on console
• Internal Team Scope users are unable to deploy builds
• Fixed an issue with the api-scheduler where it erroneously restarted services outside of the expected extension scope in Liferay PaaS client extension namespaces.