Overview
Softdrive v4.11.0 introduces new features, platform enhancements, and stability improvements across Softstream and Softnet.
This release improves remote collaboration, cross-platform compatibility, session reliability, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) management, virtual machine administration, and the overall user experience.
Features and Enhancements
- Softstream: Audio, Microphone, and Webcam Support on macOS and iOS: Added audio, microphone, and webcam support, allowing users to participate in conference calls directly within their remote sessions using macOS and iOS clients.
- Softstream: Okta Tile Support on macOS: Users can now launch remote sessions from the macOS client through an Okta application tile.
- Softstream: Overlay Layout Persistence: Overlay and widget positions are now preserved between connections, allowing users to maintain their preferred layouts.
- Softnet: Self-Service OCI Onboarding: Administrators can create platform organizations, connect an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) tenancy, and monitor its connection status directly from Organization Settings.
- Softnet: OCI VM Creation and Troubleshooting: Improved the OCI virtual machine creation workflow with a clearer configuration process. Administrators can also restart Softstream through the Troubleshoot interface.
- Softnet: Template Availability by Region and Cluster: Added visibility into cluster availability for enabled template regions, with synchronization for shared clusters and region mappings.
- Softnet: Granular VM Permissions: Introduced detailed permission controls for storage management, tier changes, hostname modifications, VM reassignment, templates, and migrations.
- Softnet: GPU Capacity Synchronization: Improved synchronization with oVirt to keep host GPU capacity and virtual machine vGPU assignments up to date.
- Softnet: Automated Template Deletion: Deleting a template from Softnet now automatically removes the corresponding oVirt template.
Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements
- Softstream: Printing Driver Installation: Removed the manual printer driver installation and confirmation step introduced in version 4.10, simplifying the printing experience.
- Softstream: Session Startup: Fixed client and server crashes on systems using the new British Columbia and Alberta time zones.
- Softstream: Video Stability: Resolved intermittent video freezes during active remote sessions.
- Softstream: Video Rendering: Fixed blank screens affecting CPU-only macOS virtual machines using 4:4:4 chroma subsampling.
- Softstream: Overlay Menus: Fixed temporary freezes when opening overlay menus and submenus.
- Softstream: Account Switching: Added a confirmation prompt before active sessions are disconnected when signing out or switching accounts.
- Softstream: Quality Settings: Fixed crashes when opening quality settings if no encoder profiles were available.
- Softstream: Preset Renaming: Fixed an issue where existing presets could be overwritten when naming conflicts occurred during renaming or sharing.
- Softstream: Portuguese Keyboard Support: Fixed a keyboard layout issue and added a setting to swap the backslash and angle-bracket keys on Portuguese keyboards in the macOS client.
- Softstream: Fleet Idle Times: Fixed the display of idle periods shorter than one minute.
- Softstream: Launcher Passwords: Added support for passwords longer than 30 characters in the Softdrive Launcher.
- Softnet: OCI VM CPU Configuration: Fixed incorrect CPU counts when creating OCI virtual machines using flexible shapes.
- Softnet: VM Migration Reliability: Resolved migration failures related to DHCP reservations, locked disk transfers, return migrations, and lost GPU assignments.
- Softnet: Fleet Templates and VM Recreation: Fixed virtual machine recreation failures following Fleet template changes and restricted template replication to configured environments.
- Softnet: Power-On and Reboot Operations: Fixed cases where power-on or reboot operations incorrectly failed when a virtual machine was already active or rebooting. Improved tier rollback handling during these operations.
- Softnet: OCI Error Reporting: Errors originating from OCI now include an "OCI error:" prefix to help distinguish them from Softnet-generated errors, which remain unchanged.
- Softnet: OCI Organization Permissions: Fixed permission handling so organization owners can configure OCI environments.
- Softnet: OCI Guest-Agent Commands: Added support for larger scripts in OCI guest-agent commands and enabled passwordless sudo for the ocarun user on Linux OCI virtual machines.
- Softnet: OCI Private Key Access: Updated access controls so super administrators can view decrypted OCI private keys, while regular users cannot.
- Softnet: Table Pagination: Restored selectable rows-per-page options in Softnet tables, allowing users to adjust how many records are displayed.
- Softnet: Backend Health Checks: Improved health checks to detect unavailable Redis and PostgreSQL connections, allowing unhealthy backend instances to be restarted.
Expected Result
With Softdrive v4.11.0, users and administrators can expect improved remote session reliability, enhanced collaboration capabilities, and more efficient virtual machine and infrastructure management.
The release enhances audio and video collaboration on macOS and iOS, adds persistent overlay layouts, improves authentication workflows, simplifies OCI onboarding, introduces more granular VM permissions, and improves template and GPU management.
Additional fixes address session stability, printing, video rendering, VM migration, power management, keyboard compatibility, and infrastructure health monitoring.
Additional Information
Softdrive continues to enhance platform performance, stability, security, and compatibility to provide a reliable virtual desktop experience across supported environments.
For additional assistance or to report an issue, please visit Softdrive Support.