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The MAAS 3.3 Beta 1 release is out.  You should take a look.

Normally, a blog like this would wait for the final release.  And that blog will still happen, later, but this feels like a watershed moment:

• There are some significant new features, including
  • better search filtering,
  • Ansible playbooks for MAAS set-up and teardown,
  • and upcoming, a move to Vault for storing secrets.
• We’ve made real progress on MAAS under the hood, with
  • Native support for 22.04 LTS and core22,
  • UI performance improvements for large machine counts,
  • Enhanced MIB support for Windows OS images,
  • and (also upcoming) better reliability for simultaneous machine deployments.
• You’ll find meaningful, forward-looking results at the hardware level, in our first (usable) steps toward DPU support (“smart NICs”); more on that later, in a blog post by a colleague.
• MAAS now has a usable Terraform provider, and there’s related Terraform work in progress.
• Some of our murkiest reference documentation has been clarified, by adding a great deal of usable details to
  • MAAS configuration settings reference,
  • MAAS event documentation, and
  • MAAS audit event documentation.
• Finally, we’ve all taken turns at the bench, fixing well over 100 bugs for this first Beta release.

This isn’t something we can brag about.  This kind of rich and balanced release isn’t something one sets out to do.  Mostly, it’s about making lists of bothersome things in the product; turning those lists into realistic specifications; and then letting interest, dissatisfaction, and a love of open-source drive the work.

You should join up

We need your help with this Beta release, and the additional Beta and candidate releases that will follow over the next few weeks.  There’s some great stuff here, and probably also bugs, and shortcomings, and….  You are the best testers, the best doc reviewers, the best people to help us see what’s been missed.  Please dig in and get your hands dirty, by going to the MAAS installation page, choose the “v3.3 Beta 1 Snap” or “v3.3 Beta 1 Packages” from the in-page drop-down, and giving it a try.

We mentioned that this Beta release is — kind of — a watershed; that’s because, as a team, we’ve applied some serious Ubuntu (the principle) to this release.  We worked together to produce results that we couldn’t have expected from the sum of each of us individually.

But that’s only half of it: If you join us in testing, breaking, bug-reporting, and generally wrangling out the issues in our Beta, it takes that Ubuntu to the next level.  We all become an extended team, working on an important result.  And that’s something we really want.

We value your feedback, and we welcome your help.  Join us.