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CANFAR Science Platform 2025.1

CANFAR Science Platform 2025.1

Dear CANFAR Community,

We are pleased to announce a major milestone for the CANFAR Science Platform: On September 9, 2025, we completed a transition from a beta system, initially released in 2021, to our first production release, CANFAR Science Platoform 2025.1, marking the beginning of an official production release cycle.

This latest version is ready for use on www.canfar.net, and is also available for deployments to pick up across SRCNet.

If you use scripts to launch sessions on the science platform via the now deprecated skaha python package or with curl, please switch to the new CANFAR Python Client or CLI. If you access the API directly, please switch the reference to skaha/v0 to skaha/v1 as soon as possible.

✨ Highlights

  • New & Improved User Documentation Hub
  • Official Release of the CANFAR Python Client & CLI — see clients docs
  • Smart Session Launching — choose between flexible (auto-scaling) and fixed modes
  • Science Portal UI Improvements — added display for home directory & storage quota usage
  • CARTA 5.0: latest radio astronomy visualization tool (August 2025 Release)
  • Firefly: IVOA-compliant catalog browsing and visualization platform

📝 Changes & Deprecations

  • Breaking Changes:
    • For API users, headless sessions no longer require the type parameter
    • For Python Client & CLI users, headless sessions no longer require the kind parameter and the headless session kind will be deprecated in a future release.
    • Succeeded status is now Completed for all session types, e.g. when performing a session.info() query.
  • Skaha API v1 Released — v0 API will be sunset with the next major release. Portal users are unaffected; API users should plan to migrate to v1 as soon as possible.
  • Container Image Labels are no longer required in the Harbor Image Registry. They are only used to populate dropdown menu options in the Science Portal UI.
  • Session Types — launching via API, omit the type parameter for headless mode; interactive sessions require the type parameter.
  • Status Changes — Job status Succeeded is now Completed for all session types.

🐛 Fixes

  • Resource Monitoring — RAM and CPU usage for sessions now display correctly in the Science Portal UI.

⚙️ Technical Changes

  • CANFAR deployment requires Kubernetes v1.29 or later
  • Kueue Scheduling — optional advanced job scheduling system that can be enabled per namespace to reduce cluster pressure and provide queue management.
  • Monitoring Fixes — Skaha API now uses the the Job API instead of the Pod API internally to provide more accurate resource usage information.
  • Flexible sessions use the Burstable Kubernetes Quality of Service (QoS) class instead of Guaranteed, which provides better resource efficiency on the cluster. Currently, flexible sessions can grow up to 8 cores and 32GB of RAM.
  • Internal API's have been updated to use the Job API instead of the Pod API. This provides better resource monitoring and usage information.

📦 Deployment Notes

  • Use the offically supported helm charts in the opencadc/deployments for CANFAR 2025.1 deployments.
  • To test, profile and setup the Kueue scheduling system, see the deployment guide for detailed instructions.

Python Client & CLI

Component Version
canfar v1.0.2

Helm Charts & Container Images

Component Helm Chart Version Container Image
base 0.4.0 N/A
cavern 0.7.0 images.opencadc.org/platform/cavern:0.9.0
skaha 1.0.3 images.opencadc.org/platform/skaha:1.0.2
posix-mapper 0.4.4 images.opencadc.org/platform/posix-mapper:0.3.2
science-portal 1.0.0 images.opencadc.org/platform/science-portal:1.0.0
storage-ui 0.6.0 images.opencadc.org/client/storage-ui:1.3.0

💬 Contact & Support

For any questions about this release, or for information relating to CANFAR issues or deployment support, head over to the CANFAR Discord Server or please contact us at support@canfar.net.


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