Archive of 2023 What’s new
Announcements from previous 2023 releases.
Contents
November 2023
The November 2023 release included:
Enhancements to Course Manager activity tracking
On the lab end user’s Activity page and the event Activity Summary page, you can now:
- Generate a CSV report to see details about lab end user activity.
- View much more information in the Activity Data field.
- Distinguish between command, script, and Virtual Browser shortcuts and actions in the Activity Type field.
For more information, see Viewing Learning Console activity and Viewing the event activity summary.
October 2023
The October 2023 release included:
Multi-Attach Storage
Multi-Attach Storage helps to simplify cloud infrastructure management by letting you share storage resources among multiple VMs, optimizing efficiency and flexibility.
With Multi-Attach Storage, you can:
- Create an independent storage node that can be shared with multiple VMs.
- Manage shared storage resources through a centralized control panel.
To enable Multi-Attach Storage, contact Skytap Support.
For more information, see Multi-attach storage for environments.
Skytap integrated Precisely Assure MIMIX™ Software for HA/DR
Skytap has partnered with Precisely to offer integrated Precisely Assure MIMIX™ Software for HA/DR to protect your IBM i workloads running in Skytap.
Now you can purchase cloud compute, storage, and HA/DR capabilities for IBM i workloads in Skytap from the Azure Marketplace.
Precisely Assure MIMIX™ Software provides:
- Scalable, flexible, real-time replication.
- Comprehensive data integrity for confident switching.
- Automated configuration, monitoring, and management.
For more information, see Overview of Precisely Assure MIMIX™ Software on Skytap VMs.
New Course Manager API
You can now use the Course Manager API to automate provisioning and managing Course Manager resources. For more information, see Using the Course Manager API.
Enhancements to the Course Manager Learning Console
You can now:
- Preview the Learning Console while you create and edit content for instructor-led training and on-demand lab courses. For more information, see Previewing the Learning Console.
- View many more Content Pane activities on the lab end user’s Activity page. For more information, see Viewing Learning Console activity.
Enhancements to Course Manager Manual shortcuts and lab actions
You can now:
- Use Virtual Browser shortcuts and actions to allow lab end users to access a resource through a VNC connection.
- Choose from a wider range of invocation behaviors when you add command or script shortcuts or actions to a course.
For more information, see Adding lab actions to a course, Inserting a command shortcut, Inserting a script shortcut, and Inserting Virtual Browser shortcut.
July 2023
The July 2023 release included:
New Course Manager metadata attributes
You can now create sensitive and non-sensitive metadata attributes that can be used for lab automation at the feature, user, course, event, event participant, and on-demand lab levels. For more information, see Using metadata attributes.
Enhancements to questions in the Course Manager Manual
You can now:
- Create questions in the Manual whose answers aren’t evaluated for correctness.
- Use event participant and on-demand lab metadata attributes to collect an end user’s answers to questions in the Manual.
For more information, see Inserting a question.
May 2023
The May 2023 release included:
Enhancements to Course Manager scripts
Course Manager now automatically provisions and manages the power state of the Script Host VM so you can use scripts more seamlessly. For more information, see Using script shortcuts, script actions, and lifecycle scripts.
Enhancements to Course Manager reporting
Course Manager reports now include information about Manual progress and Manual and lab action activity. For more information, see Course Manager Reporting.
April 2023
The April 2023 release included:
New Course Manager self-service lab consumption
You can now allow on-demand lab end users to end a lab session from the Configuration menu and last page of the Manual in the Content Pane. When a lab end user ends a lab session, the lab environment is deleted in Skytap and consumed in Course Manager. For more information, see Self-service consumption.
Enhancements to the Course Manager Activity and event Activity Summary pages
The lab end user’s Activity page and the event Activity Summary page now display information about success or failure regardless of whether the end user is notified of the result. This information displays when the following are in use:
- CMHelper version 1.1.11 or newer for interactive command Manual shortcuts and lab actions.
- CMSysHelper version 1.0.3 or newer for system command Manual shortcuts and lab actions.
- Script Host v10 or newer for script Manual shortcuts and lab actions.
- Virtual Browser v9 or newer for Virtual Browser Manual shortcuts and lab actions.
For more information, see Viewing Learning Console activity and Viewing the event activity summary.
February 2023
The February 2023 release included:
Self-service reserved capacity in Skytap on Azure
Skytap has enabled self-service purchasing of reserved capacity usage for Skytap on Azure, which lets you run your always-on workloads at a reduced rate.
For example, if you have an AIX VM that runs constantly and consumes 128 GB with 500 GB of storage, you would purchase 128 GB RAM of Power compute and 500 GB of Storage reserved capacity to run this VM at the reduced rate.
For more details, see Reserved capacity for Skytap on Azure
January 2023
The January 2023 release included:
Updated Schedules page
Skytap has updated the user interface for Schedules to make creating, viewing, and editing schedules easier.
For 2022 Skytap release notes, visit Archive of 2022 What’s new. For older release notes dating back to 2011, contact support@skytap.com.