Product
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Cloud costs
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released
October 28, 2021
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3
min read
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Harness Product Update | October 2021

Updated

With October already nearly behind us, it’s time for another product update! I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t wish everyone a happy Halloween first! 🎃🎃🎃

We have a lot in store for you: features, features, features! It’s like I’m Oprah, but I give features away instead of cars. But - whether you’re into CI, CD, CCM, FF, or all of the above, there’s something in here for you. 

We also had a rather juicy press announcement: our selection of Scott Sanchez as Harness’ new CMO! Read all about it below in our press mentions.

Enjoy, and see you next month!

New Features

CD

Deployment Freeze Windows

Now you have the flexibility to have freeze windows for services as well. You can block the deployments for some specific services across your environments or to Production/Non-Production environments. 

Artifact Collection Visibility and Customization

You can now turn off/on the background job that collects the artifacts automatically if needed. You can still collect the artifacts on request using the ‘Manually pull artifacts’ option before any deployment. We have also started showing artifact collection details (like status, last collected, etc.) to give you more visibility and help you debug faster in case your artifacts are not getting collected. Read the Docs for more details.

Specify Delegate Selectors 

Users can now enforce restricted delegate access to applications like ServiceNow and Jira by providing specific delegates that can connect to these endpoints. Users can add the delegate selectors for shell script approval steps.

Custom Dashboards

Earlier, we mentioned how our users can build robust custom dashboards to visualize their deployment details. We’re rolling out a capability where users can build dashboards with dashboard-level filters, ability to export the data, set alerts for key metrics for better monitoring, and much more. Please reach out to the Customer Success team to get early access and play around with the new dashboards!

CI

Publish Test Reports Using Plugins

Users are now able to report test results in JUnit format from any custom plugin. Harness will present the test results in the build execution view under the tests tab. 

Docker Layer Caching on Openshift

Users that use Openshift K8s cluster as their build infrastructure can now leverage, using the “Buildah” plugin, Docker Layer Caching for the images they build in order to optimize and reduce the build time. 

GitHub Actions Harness now allows running the majority of GitHub Actions available on GitHub marketplace in CIE using the “GitHub Actions” plugin. This will allow users to leverage extensions already built as GitHub Actions in their Harness CI pipeline to support additional integrations.

Feature Flags

Node.js SDK Supported for Feature Flags

Our latest open-source SDK is here. You can now start using feature flags with Harness in all of your Node.js applications. Here’s the repo. For a full list of SDKs we support, see below. Learn more in the blog post

October 2021 Product Update: SDKs.

Analytics & Business Intelligence

Feature Flags now provides robust analytics and business intelligence so teams can get complete and custom visibility into their feature flags usage and operations. Harness users can bring together analytics across the entirety of the software delivery lifecycle in a way no platform has allowed to date. It’s true business intelligence for software delivery. Learn more in the blog post: Announcing Feature Flags Analytics & Business Intelligence.

CCM

Datadog + Harness

We’re now part of the Datadog UI extension library. Actually, we’re the first and only cloud cost management solution there! Users can now get visibility into their cloud spend right in their monitoring tool - no more need to navigate to another tool to see the cloud costs associated with their applications and services. Just add the extension to your dashboard and you’ll be a pro at monitoring cloud costs in no time. Learn more on the blog post.

October 2021 Product Update: Datadog.

Platform

Multiple LDAP Enhancements

  1. LDAP large groups sync: Now you can sync LDAP groups containing more than 1500 users with Harness. Earlier, there was a limitation that restricted the sync of an LDAP group to a maximum of 1500 users. This restriction has now been removed and customers can sync large LDAP groups with Harness to manage authorization easily at scale.
  2. LDAP sync scheduling: You can now use CRON expression to schedule the time and frequency of LDAP group sync based on your needs. This helps in scenarios where you may want to schedule LDAP sync outside of business hours to avoid putting load in your LDAP infra during peak hours. By default, we perform LDAP sync every 15 mins.
  3. Switch off nested query: If you do not use nested groups to manage users in your organization, you can switch off nested group query to speed up the LDAP sync process and to reduce load on your LDAP infra.

Adding Users Without Invite for SAML

By default, users are required to accept an email invite when they are added via UI or API. You can now bypass this step to enable your users to login via your SAML IDP as soon as they are added in the system. This prevents friction in scenarios where emails are lost or go to spam, requiring manual intervention. This feature is behind a feature flag. 

Harness University

New Modules and Courses: 

We have new courses now available at Harness University.

Security Courses

Security Foundations Learning Path

Feature Flags

Harness University Live:

  • November 8th and 9th 2021: Harness Fundamentals, 7am-10am PST.
  • November 10th and 11th 2021: Harness Administration, 7am-10am PST.
  • December 13th and 14th 2021: Harness Fundamentals, 9am-12pm PST.
  • December 15th and 16th 2021: Harness Administration, 9am-12pm PST.

To register for October and beyond, view our Live Events calendar

October 2021 Product Update: Prof. Canary

Notable Mentions in the Press

Upcoming Events

Upcoming Webinars & New On-Demand Content

Looking Ahead

In the next few weeks/months, here’s what’s coming at ya: 

CI

  • Support for AWS EC2 Windows & Linux Instances as Build Infrastructure - Customers will be able to use EC2 machines as their infrastructure in CI stages in case, for example, they need to use windows machines or run Docker commands directly.
  • .Net Support in Tests Intelligence - Customers will be able use Tests Intelligence with their .Net applications in order to optimize and reduce their unit test execution time. 
  • License View - Users will be able to track their license terms and consumption through the License view in the Harness UI. 

CD

  • Restore Deployments to Any Previous Version - Customers will be able to restore their applications to any previous state/version with a single click in case of a need to hotfix. 
  • Timeout Failure for Shell Scripts - Customers will be able to handle timeout failures for shell scripts differently than the rest with a new failure strategy that we will support.
  • Fetching values.yaml - Improvements in the ability to ​​fetch the individual values.yaml based on a commitSHA instead of the whole repo - coming soon.
  • Fetching in Helm - Use optimized file fetch in Helm deployments - expect to see this shortly. 
  • Canary/Primary Phases - Support ability to ensure that the artifact/manifest that was deployed in Canary Phase is deployed in Primary Phase.

FF

  • Feature Flag Pipelines - Customers will be able to build reusable feature release pipelines, piecing together flag changes with notifications, timing, approval, and more.
  • Proxy Relay - Need to cache your flag state locally in case of outages or for compliance purposes? You’ll be able to do that soon!
  • Git Sync - Meet developers where they are. Instead of adding another tool UI to the mix, devs will be able to work in code, just how they’re used to.
  • Public APIs - A big part of making life easier for developers is giving them the tools to work in code. With APIs, they’ll be able to make changes and pull data using API calls in combination with the UI.

CCM

  • AutoStopping for ECS - Customers will be able to leverage Intelligent Cloud AutoStopping to optimize their non-production ECS clusters.

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Documentation

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