Release notes for version 23.2.x

New features

AWS Fargate support

Leveraging the Fusion file system, you can now run the Nextflow head job of your pipelines with the AWS Fargate container service. Fargate is a serverless compute engine compatible with Amazon ECS that enables users to run containers without the need to provision servers or clusters in advance. The scalable Fargate container service can help speed up pipeline launch and reduce cloud-related costs by minimizing the time for cloud infrastructure to be deployed.

Other improvements

• Allow Launcher users to create, edit, and upload datasets
• Harmonize list sorting in Compute environments and Credentials list pages
• Update Enable GPU label, sublabel and add warning when activated
• Set workflow status to unknown when job status is also in an unknown state
• Add support for AWS SES (Simple Email Service) as an alternative to SMTP
• Add ability to edit the names of Tower entities:
  • Organizations
  • Workspaces
  • Compute environments
  • Pipelines
  • Actions
• Update runs list page with new status badges and improved layout
• Add support for mobile screen layout in runs list page
• Allow advanced settings in the AWS ECS config field
• Increase the AWS Batch Memory / CPUs ratio to 4GB

Fixes

• Disable Resume option for runs that cannot be resumed
• Fix task detail modal width
• Reserved word checks are now case insensitive
• Fix support for AWS SSE encryption for Nextflow head job
• Fix race condition causing the "No workflow runs" notice being incorrectly displayed
• Fix Pipeline form page breaking during tab reload
• Fix an issue resolving Workspace in the Admin panel when several workspaces exist with the same name in different organizations
• Fix AWS Batch allocation strategy: BEST_FIT_PROGRESSIVE for on-demand CEs and SPOT_CAPACITY_OPTIMIZED for spot CEs
• Fix token creation unique name check is now case-insensitive
• Fix issue propagating before: search keywords from Dashboard to runs page
• Fix issue with the "copy to clipboard" button using a legacy tooltip implementation
• Fix incorrect units displayed for syscr and syscw in task details modal

Breaking changes and warnings

Breaking changes and instructions listed here apply when updating from Tower version 23.1. If you are updating from an earlier version, see the release notes of previous versions for a complete picture of changes that may affect you.

Updated AWS permissions policies

Several new Tower features over the last few releases require updated AWS IAM permissions policies. Retrieve and apply the latest policy files here.

Wave requires container registry credentials

The Wave containers service uses container registry credentials in Tower to authenticate to your (public or private) container registries. This is separate from your existing cloud provider credentials stored in Tower.

This means that, for example, AWS ECR (Elastic Container Registry) authentication requires an ECR container registry credential if you are running a compute environment with Wave enabled, even if your existing AWS credential in Tower has IAM access to your ECR.

See the relevant container registry credentials page for provider-specific instructions.

Upgrade steps

This Tower version requires a database schema update. Follow these steps to update your DB instance and the Tower installation.

!!! warning "" To ensure no data loss, the database volume must be persistent on the local machine. Use the volumes key in the db or redis section of your docker-compose.yml file to specify a local path to the DB or Redis instance.

1. Make a backup of the Tower database.

2. Download and update your container versions.

3. Redeploy the Tower application:

   docker-compose:

   • To migrate the database schema, restart the application with docker-compose down, then docker-compose up.

   kubernetes:

   • Update the cron service with kubectl apply -f tower-cron.yml. This will automatically migrate the database schema.
   • Update the frontend and backend services with kubectl apply -f tower-srv.yml.

   custom deployment:

   • Run the /migrate-db.sh script provided in the backend container. This will migrate the database schema.
   • Deploy Tower following your usual procedures.

Nextflow launcher image

If you must host your nf-launcher container image on a private image registry:

1. Copy the nf-launcher image to your private registry.

2. Update your tower.env with the launch container environment variable:

   TOWER_LAUNCH_CONTAINER=<FULL_PATH_TO_YOUR_PRIVATE_IMAGE>

!!! warning "" If you're using AWS Batch, you will need to configure a custom job definition and populate the TOWER_LAUNCH_CONTAINER with the job definition name instead.

Changelog

For a detailed list of all changes, see the Nextflow Tower Changelog.

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