temBoard 8 - unified authentication, PostgreSQL 15

Villamblard, 14 November 2022

temBoard allows you to administer and monitor your PostgreSQL fleet.

Dalibo announce the immediate availability of temBoard 8.0. This new major release review authentication between interface and agents, brings new features, and renews the foundations of the project. Follow carefuly upgrade guide for a reliable migration.

Unifed Authentication

temBoard 8 improves security of communication between interface and agents and simplify the deployment and configuration of agents. Now the interface signs each request sent to the agent with an asymetric cryptgraphic key. Agent accepts a single public signing key and verify request, allowing request from a signle interface.

temBoard 8 agent does not accept shared-secret authentication anymore. Also, temBoard 8 interface only has a user base, authentified by password. temBoard 8 interface is now the identity provider for agents. temBoard 8 agent does not have its own user base anymore.

New CLI

Dalibos ships two packages for temBoard : Interface in temboard package and agent in temboard-agent package. Now, each package provides a single and only command, respectivly temboard and temboard-agent.

Side commands temboard-migratedb and temboard-agent-register are now sub-commands. Other outdated commands have been removed. New sub-commands for administration and introspection of temBoard are now available.

PostgreSQL 15, RHEL 9, Debian bookworm

temBoard 8 is able to run on last versions of RHEL and Debian. PostgreSQL is supported from version 9.6 up to latest 15.

However, PostgreSQL 9.4 and 9.5 support is dropped both in agent and interface. Also, running temBoard interface with Python 2.7 and 3.5 is deprecated support for such outdated runtime will be fully dropped in next minor releases of temBoard 8. This will exclude Debian Stretch as runtime target.

Offline Agent Registration

A new sub-command temboard register-instance registers an instance to temBoard inventory. Unlike temboard-agent register, this command runs in CLI context of temBoard interface. This operation does not require any password. Network connexions to agent are initiated from interface machine, allowing to respect firewall policy preventing agent-initiated connexions to interface machine.

Restyled Documentation

temBoard’s documentation has been deeply restyled for better readability. Choosing Material Design theme with temBoard primary color and integrated search provides better navigation.

Performances

Agent execute 25% less transactions on managed PostgreSQL instance. Multiplexing tasks and caching persistent values reduces agent impact on instance.

Activity view is now scoped to 300 longuest request, this reduce browser load for big instances.

Default value for monitoring data purge is set to 2 years. By default, temBoard interface keeps only the last 2 years of monitoring data.

Transition

To ease transition, temBoard 8 interface is fully compatible with temBoard agent 7.11. Don’t miss the upgrade guide for a smooth migration. Next 8.X releases will drop temBoard agent 7 support.

And more…

A lot of improvements and fixes landed in temBoard 8. temBoard web UI received a lot of improvements. Error presentation is not modal anymore, and every error is dismissable. New about pages help you to know your PostgreSQL instances and your temBoard installation. Instance inventory is available for download in CSV format. Both temBoard interface and agent restarts background services upon crash.

• Changelog for 8.0.
• temBoard on GitHub.
• Documentation.

Availability

Follow installation documentation to install temBoard from packages or sources.

Future

Dalibo will release maintenance and evolution versions of temBoard 8 with new features, optimisation and modernization of the project. We expect a finer privilege handling in temBoard interface, PEV2 integration to visualize execution plan, and more.

temBoard is Free software maintained by Dalibo Labs.