Release Notes

Photon Controller 1.1 Release Notes

VMware ESXi 6.0.0 Patch 201611001 (ESXi600-201611001), which is available by searching for patches for ESXi 6.0.0 on the My VMware Product Patches web site at https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/patch.
Lightwave version 1.0.1
NSX-T version 1.0.1
vSAN for Photon Platform version 1.1
ESXi 6.5 is unsupported at this time.

ESXi cloud hosts are joined to the Lightwave domain.
Communication from Photon Controller to the Photon Controller agent on the ESXi hosts is secured with SSL.
Requires Lightwave version 1.0.1.
All SSL certificates for the Photon Platform management plane are issued by the Lightwave Certificate Authority.

VMware vSAN for Photon Platform version 1.0.1 is required.
Photon Controller has built-in support for vSAN for Photon Platform.
Disk flavors can be tagged as vSAN-specific. Disks created with those flavors will be placed on a vSAN datastore.
If a vSAN datastore is created after Photon Controller is installed, Photon Controller detects that vSAN datastore after 15 minutes.
If you are planning to use vSAN, you must add a vSAN datastore to Photon Controller's deployment YAML file when you install Photon Controller.
Known bug: vSAN performance service does not work properly.

VMware NSX-T version 1.0.1 is required.
Photon Controller has built-in support for NSX.
A custom DHCP server is provided to allow VMs to get IP addresses.
Users can create multiple virtual networks, each associated with a single project. A single project allows multiple virtual networks.
Users can create virtual machines that are attached to the virtual networks.
Photon Controller orchestrates DHCP reservations.
Users can assign floating IP addresses from a pool of addresses to a VM.
Photon Controller can manage VLAN-backed networks or consume NSX networks, but not both.

Kubernetes has been upgraded to 1.4.3.
Kubernetes UI and DNS are supported.
Kubernetes can be configured to work with the Harbor Docker Registry.
Many bug fixes and small improvements.
Kubernetes currently works only with VLAN-backed networks.
Known bug: If the Kubernetes master or etcd node fails, it will not be recreated. Kubernetes worker nodes are, however, recreated.

The Harbor Docker Registry version 0.3.0 (docker register with integrated UI and role-based access) has been added as a new container cluster type. Although it is not a container orchestration cluster itself, it supports other clusters, especially Kubernetes.

Support for Mesos and Docker Swarm remains experimental, and they can be deployed only through the API.

Photon Controller has an entirely new UI.
The UI supports differentiated access for system administrators, tenant administrators and project users.
Users can create and manage Kubernetes clusters.
Users can create and manage VMs.
Known Issue: By default, the tokens granted by Lighwave last five minutes and are renewable. The UI and CLI do not renew the tokens automatically. As a workaround, you can extend the token lifetime through the Lightwave UI: Select “Policies & Configuration," and then “Token Policy." Edit “Max Token Lifetime" to provide a timeout in milliseconds.

The Photon Controller agent, which Photon Controller installs on the ESXi host, is deployed in conjunction with a Lightwave VIB. (VIB stands for vSphere Installation Bundle; it distributes an ESXi software package).
The communication between Photon Controller and the agent is encrypted with SSL.
The Photon Controller agent supports NSX.
The Photon Controller agent supports vSAN.

The installation process deploys Lightwave on a separate management VM. For instance, when you deploy four management VMs, one will have Lightwave and three will have Photon Controller.
The installation process joins ESXi hosts to the Lightwave domain for secure communication.
ESXi hosts should have static IP addresses and a non-default hostname.

When querying the API for the set of tenants or projects, a request now returns only the set of tenants or projects that the user is authorized to access.
API support has been added for virtual networks.
A new /info API provides information about whether SDN networking with NSX is enabled as well as version information about Photon Controller.

A new Quick Start Guide has been added to our documentation. It's available on our GitHub wiki.