TDP v3.6.2 Release Notes

Release date: 11 January 2024 (Last updated: 7 March 2024)

TetraScience has released its next version of the Tetra Data Platform (TDP), version 3.6.2. This release focuses on implementing various security updates as well as resolving several known issues. It also provides customers with improved Intermediate Data Schema (IDS) search filter options and infrastructure monitoring.

Here are the details for what’s new in TDP v3.6.2.

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Security

TetraScience continually monitors and tests the TDP codebase to identify potential security issues. Various security updates are applied to the following areas on an ongoing basis:

  • Operating systems
  • Third-party libraries

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Quality Management

TetraScience is committed to creating quality software. Software is developed and tested following the ISO 9001-certified TetraScience Quality Management system. This system ensures the quality and reliability of TetraScience software while maintaining data integrity and confidentiality.

New Functionality

New functionalities are features that weren’t previously available in the TDP.

  • There is no new functionality in this release.

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GxP Impact Assessment

All new TDP functionalities go through a GxP impact assessment to determine validation needs for GxP installations. New Functionality items marked with an asterisk (*) address usability, supportability, or infrastructure issues, and do not affect Intended Use for validation purposes, per this assessment. Enhancements and Bug Fixes do not generally affect Intended Use for validation purposes, and items marked as Beta Release are not suitable for GxP use.

Enhancements

Enhancements are modifications to existing functionality that improve performance or usability, but don't alter the function or intended use of the system. The following are new enhancements introduced in TDP v3.6.2.

Enhancements for Performance and Scale

New Data Cleanup Process for Diagnostic Pipelines

Internal diagnostic pipeline data is now automatically deleted after 30 days. Diagnostic pipelines continuously test all of the infrastructure that’s required by Tetra Data Pipelines and publish failure notifications. This diagnostic data is internal only and doesn’t impact any customer data. By cleaning up diagnostic pipeline data on a regular cadence, TetraScience can reduce cloud storage requirements and cost.

For more information, see Logs, Metrics, and Alerts.

Enhancements for Data Access and Management

Improved IDS Search Filter Options

When customers select fields for IDS search filters, the Value drop-down list now displays all of the selected schema’s existing attribute values instead of top results only. Customers can now also enter custom filter values, such as custom nested fields.

For more information, see How to Apply Filters to Search by Schema Data.

Enhancements for Data Harmonization and Engineering

Improved Performance for Elasticsearch Indexing and Reconciliation

TDP v3.6.0 introduced a new Context Search feature that displays related documents in search results. For files with a high number of associated documents (high lineage), this can slow down Elasticsearch indexing and reconciliation performance. To help improve performance for these jobs, a new default setting has been applied to limit the maximum number of associated files (lineage size) a file can have when indexing its associated files (lineage indexing). Starting in TDP v3.6.2, lineage indexing will be skipped for any file with more than 20 related files to help maintain high throughput.

To identify and re-lineage-index any high-lineage files (those with more than 20 associated files), customers must now contact their customer success manager (CSM) to run a separate reconciliation job that overrides the default lineage indexing limit.

Enhancements for TDP System Administration

Improved Infrastructure Monitoring

A new, internal-only ts-monitoring AWS account is now subscribed to the *-alarm-notifier Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topics that convey high-priority infrastructure alerts to customers. The update provides limited permissions for SNS:Subscribe actions on *-alarm-notifier Amazon SNS topics only, without accessing new data or creating direct links to customer AWS accounts. The update doesn’t impact existing customer email notifications.

For more information about the alerts that are sent to TetraScience, see Logs, Metrics, and Alerts.

Bug Fixes

The following bugs are now fixed.

Data Integrations Bug Fixes

  • Customers no longer need to refresh the Edit Connector Information page before editing or removing labels from Pluggable Connectors.
  • The Tetra Hub installation script now always uses the correct Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance role, even if one already exists on the host server.

Data Harmonization and Engineering Bug Fixes

TDP System Administration Bug Fixes

Deprecated Features

There are no new deprecated features in this release. For more information about TDP deprecations, see Tetra Product Deprecation Notices.

Known and Possible Issues

The following are known and possible issues for TDP v3.6.2.

Data Integrations Known Issues

  • On the Command Details page, If a command has no response (for example, if the request's status is Pending), the Response section displays the following error:

     "ERROR":{1 item
     "message":"src property must be a valid json object"
     }
    

    When this error appears, command processing isn't affected and no action is needed. A fix for this issue is in development and testing and is scheduled for a future TDP release. For more information, see View Command Details.

  • Pluggable Connector offline alarms aren't created when a Connector is created. To create these offline alarms, customers must select Sync on the Connector Details page after the Connector is online. A fix for this issue is in development and testing and is scheduled for TDP v3.7.0. For more information, see Change a Pluggable Connector’s Status.

  • When installing a Tetra Hub on a host server that already has an AWS Systems Manager registration key, the Amazon ECS container agent startup fails. An AccessDenied error is then logged in the agent’s Amazon CloudWatch Logs. In TDP v3.6.0, the Hub installer automatically detects the issue and provides instructions to fix it.

  • When installing or rebooting a Tetra Hub, the Hub’s Health status incorrectly displays as CRITICAL for a short time in the TDP UI. After the TDP receives the Hub’s initial metrics and proxy status, the Hub’s status displays as Online. No action is needed, and no alarms or notifications are generated.

  • The Integration Events tab on the Health Monitoring Dashboard might present a spinner if an Agent is configured with no file path (filePath) and hasn't produced any file events (fileEvents).

Data Harmonization and Engineering Known Issues

  • In Browse view on the Search Files page, the Edit Labels on <#> Searched Files action processes all of an organization’s files in the Data Lake, not just the searched files. A fix for this issue is in development and testing and planned for TDP v4.0.0. List view on the Search Files page is unaffected by this defect.
  • Files with more than 20 associated documents (high-lineage files) do not have their lineage indexed by default. To identify and re-lineage-index any high-lineage files, customers must contact their CSM to run a separate reconciliation job that overrides the default lineage indexing limit.
  • Elasticsearch index mapping conflicts can occur when a client or private namespace creates a backwards-incompatible data type change. For example: If doc.myField is a string in the common IDS and an object in the non-common IDS, then it will cause an index mapping conflict, because the common and non-common namespace documents are sharing an index. When these mapping conflicts occur, the files aren’t searchable through the TDP UI or API endpoints. As a workaround, customers can either create distinct, non-overlapping version numbers for their non-common IDSs or update the names of those IDSs.
  • File reprocessing jobs can sometimes show less scanned items than expected when either a health check or out-of-memory (OOM) error occurs, but not indicate any errors in the UI. These errors are still logged in Amazon CloudWatch Logs. A fix for this issue is in development and testing.
  • File reprocessing jobs can sometimes incorrectly show that a job finished with failures when the job actually retried those failures and then successfully reprocessed them. A fix for this issue is in development and testing.
  • On the Pipeline Manager page, pipeline trigger conditions that customers set with a text option must match all of the characters that are entered in the text field. This includes trailing spaces, if there are any.
  • File edit and update operations are not supported on metadata and label names (keys) that include special characters. Metadata, tag, and label values can include special characters, but it’s recommended that customers use the approved special characters only. For more information, see Attributes.
  • The File Details page sometimes displays an Unknown status for workflows that are either in a Pending or Running status. Output files that are generated by intermediate files within a task script sometimes show an Unknown status, too.

Data Access and Management Known Issues

  • File events aren’t created for temporary (TMP) files, so they’re not searchable. This behavior can also result in an Unknown state for Workflow and Pipeline views on the File Details page.
  • When customers search for labels that include @ symbols in the TDP UI’s search bar, not all results are always returned.
  • When customers search for some unicode character combinations in the TDP UI’s Search bar, not all results are always returned.
  • If customers modify an existing collection of search queries by adding a new filter condition from one of the Options modals (Basic, Attributes, Data (IDS) Filters, or RAW EQL), but they don't select the Apply button, the previous, existing query is deleted. To modify the filters for an existing collection, customers must select the Apply button in the Options modal before you update the collection. For more information, see How to Save Collections and Shortcuts.

TDP System Administration Known Issues

  • The latest Connector versions incorrectly log the following errors in Amazon CloudWatch Logs:
    • Error loading organization certificates. Initialization will continue, but untrusted SSL connections will fail.
    • Client is not initialized - certificate array will be empty
      These organization certificate errors have no impact and shouldn’t be logged as errors. A fix for this issue is currently in development and testing, and is scheduled for an upcoming release. There is no workaround to prevent Connectors from producing these log messages. To filter out these errors when viewing logs, customers can apply the following CloudWatch Logs Insights query filters when querying log groups. (Issue #2818)

CloudWatch Logs Insights Query Example for Filtering Organization Certificate Errors

fields @timestamp, @message, @logStream, @log
| filter message != 'Error loading organization certificates. Initialization will continue, but untrusted SSL connections will fail.'
| filter message != 'Client is not initialized - certificate array will be empty'
| sort @timestamp desc
| limit 20
  • If a reconciliation job, bulk edit of labels job, or bulk pipeline processing job is canceled, then the job’s ToDo, Failed, and Completed counts can sometimes display incorrectly.

Upgrade Considerations

During the upgrade, there might be a brief downtime when users won't be able to access the TDP user interface and APIs.

After the upgrade, the TetraScience team verifies that the platform infrastructure is working as expected through a combination of manual and automated tests. If any failures are detected, the issues are immediately addressed, or the release can be rolled back. Customers can also verify that TDP search functionality continues to return expected results, and that their workflows continue to run as expected.

For more information about the release schedule, including the GxP release schedule and timelines, see the Product Release Schedule.

For more details about the timing of the upgrade, customers should contact their CSM.

Other Release Notes

To view other TDP release notes, see Tetra Data Platform Release Notes.