Release notes
April 2023
New Features
Introducing Batch-Based Processing Deployments
Model versions may now be registered with batch processing configuration. This will allow for Verta endpoints that expect to receive large data frames to process in batches
The batch predict feature allows you to make predictions against a large Pandas DataFrame. The client's batch_predict() method will split the DataFrame into batches of the specified size for prediction requests and then collect the predictions to return as a single DataFrame
To learn more follow this guide
Release Checklists enhancements
Items on a release checklist have optional access controls - organization admins can configure checklist items so that only the approved user group may complete it
Release checklists can prevent transition to a specific stage. Organization admins can assign a checklist to apply to a stage transition and users will be prevented from starting the transition until the corresponding checklist is complete
Validate a model's dependencies locally and speed up iteration cycle
Verta now provides convenience functions for scanning a provided model class for dependencies and identifying any missing packages in the provided environment
This can help catch problems early in the development process, and avoid time wasted debugging deployment issues
Enhancements and Resolved Issues
Verta conducted our standard monthly vulnerability detection and remediation process
March 2023
New Features
Introducing Release Readiness & Governance Checklists
Create and customize checklists for your team to review and complete as model versions advance through the lifecycle
Improve the safety and governance of model releases without slowing them down with heavy-handed processes
Generates auditable paper trails
To get started customizing your own checklists, upgrade to the new permission system and follow along with this guide
Speed up iteration on models for deployment
Client based tools to verify missed dependencies, external libraries or data type conversion issues before registering a model
Provide the ability to add init test client function that runs at the end of the build to automatically test an endpoint and surface results - prevents deploying erroneous endpoints
New Permission and Access System
Simplifies access management for data scientists and users and provides more granular control for organization administrators
Straightforward connection to Enterprise IdP systems like AD and Okta
Coordinate a migration for your private environment with your Verta contact
Enhancements and Resolved Issues
Verta conducted our standard monthly vulnerability detection and remediation process
Verta supports bulk ingestion of models to Catalog from ML Flow. Find the script you need in our examples repo
February 2023
New Features
Multiple Namespace Support is now in beta
Use Kubernetes namespaces to isolate Verta endpoints to different nodes in your cluster
Isolate Business units and give them different resource quotas
Log all model traffic with Model Data Logging
All model traffic, including the input data sent for inference, the results of the inference and any intermediary data, can be stored now
Store and search your model traffic with Amazon Athena to trace model performance issues and results
CloudWatch Integration
Verta now integrates with CloudWatch for APM monitoring
Contact us to get started with the CloudWatch configuration if your team needs it
Dedicated resource mode
You can now configure dedicated machines for high throughput and compute heavy endpoints.
Dedicated resource mode blocks entire nodes for model inferences of an endpoint and prevents noisy neighbor problems.
Enhancements and Resolved Issues
There is a new platform login page with updated visual
Track all deploys of your models on the RMV Release page, now including listing cloud provider service or naming edge devices where the model is running
Pending approval (of model version stage changes) will be collated for all versions on a new tab for the model titled “Pending Approval”. Quickly review and act on all requests
The Model Versions tab will now support a card and a list view. From list view you can select multiple model versions to compare details across versions
On model versions, the release readiness checklist has been updated to allow users to manually “check off” (complete) items, and to log who completed the item and the timestamp of the action
Custom prediction id support: With the
deployed_model.predict_with_idfunction, pass your custom UUID to track model inferencesVerta conducted our standard monthly vulnerability detection and remediation process
An issue with SAML login was resolved
Improvements to resolve the sporadic long latency issue and sporadic 5XX related to Load Balances and improper draining and removal of nodes in AWS
Other performance improvements related to web UI and authentication systems, including validators to prevent issues with variable names and canary parameters for deployment
November/December 2022
New Features
Model Catalog Integrate and Reproduce Pages
Two new tabs on each model version capture the information needed to test and reproduce models and integrate them with existing systems.
The Reproduce tab shows information captured when the model is registered that lets collaborators understand and models lineage and reproduce the model. The model’s environment, experiments that were run upstream, code version, datasets and any attributes logged on the model are visible.
The Integrate page collates the necessary details for any engineering partner who is looking to integrate the model into existing tools. Artifacts and and the models API (as JSON and easily readable widget) are available
These new pages replace the model packages, api and insights tabs on model versions. No features have been removed.
Model Catalog Log External Deploys
Document and record where your models are deployed, no matter if they’re in Verta, another cloud provider or on an edge devices
Collaborators can note the location and description of all deploy locations (directly beneath where they download the model container on the release page) so all locations where the model is running are documented
Verta endpoints are automatically documented
Enhancements and Resolved Issues
The model monitoring page has been updated to include a newer, easier to use and smaller filtering tool.
Model Version Stage Changes (moving between dev, staging and production) has been updated to allow for more possible stage changes as long as the requisite approvals are granted. If users are reverting or skipping suggested changes, a notification will appear so they are aware.
Stage changes for a model will now be recorded as 3 steps on the activity log, a request, an approval and a commit. The commit is assigned to the original requestor and occurs automatically once the final approval is given.
Verta conducted our standard monthly vulnerability detection and remediation process
Our Vulnerability Scanning feature has moved to the Release page on a model version, and the tool has been updated to be easier to read.
The Activity Log is now on the Registered Model level and shows activity for all versions.
Platform audit logs can now log Model API/inference activity, including in a separate location from platform operational logs.
October 2022
New Features
Model Landing Page is now Model Cards
Information about models has been reorganized so all team members can quickly understand key details about each model in your organization’s catalog
This includes a control panel to track each version’s progress toward production, an easy-to-use view of the model’s API with quick descriptions about what data it ingests and produces, and usability improvements for model promotion, model locking, and reviewing the model activity log
Quick links help you find the endpoints and monitors for all versions of the model
Model Release Management Page
A new release page on registered model versions helps you create and track releases of your model
All endpoints (along with owners, labels, and status) are listed with a simplified way to create new endpoints directly from the model version
Download the runnable Docker container for the model directly from the release page
H2O Model Support
You can now easily integrate H2O models with the Verta platform
See our documentation for an example of how to register, deploy, and run H2O models
Monitoring Alert History
You can now access a detailed history of an alert rule in model monitoring
Alert history gives a log of all changes to the alert, organized by timestamp, that includes any updates to alert conditions and any changes to alert status
Other Enhancements and Resolved Issues
Health Check Endpoints are now available for basic application monitoring for on-premise customers - Learn More
A model’s activity can now be collated across all versions, filtered and exported as a CSV
We have added a new “No data” alert status in model monitoring; if the alert rule metric has not received any inferences during the alert evaluation period the status of the alert rule is shown as "No data"
You can now easily specify the type of the model (Classification or Regression) using the field
task_typein Python client or via WebUI in the model catalog; monitoring dashboards will pre-compute the right set of metrics and dashboards based on the model task typeVerta has added support for Python 3.10
Verta no longer supports Python 2.7, 3.5, and 3.6
Verta conducted our standard monthly vulnerability detection and remediation process
An issue preventing endpoints from being removed was identified and resolved
September 2022
New Features
Model Catalog on Homepage
The platform homepage now includes a Catalog widget that lets you get quick operational insight on the models being registered, updated and maintained on your team.
Get at-a-glance insight into the most recently updated model versions and the numbers of models in production or in other stages.
Model Catalog New Filters and Model Metadata
Faster and better model inventory management with new filters and metadata attributes helps your team reuse and get more value from existing models
Look up models by owners, if they have live endpoints and by machine learning task
Assign data type and task type to models (ie: “text classification”, “audio transcription”) via the UI or Python client to categorize your catalog
New Model Documentation Template
The Verta platform now provides a robust Model Documentation template based on model documentation research from Google and IBM including prompts about model performance, limitations, risks, dependencies and opportunities.
Enable your teams to easily follow model documentation best practices in Verta. Quickly embed images, links, and emoji so key data and facts can be easily highlighted and shared
Transition projects between data scientists with ease and allows new team members to get up to speed on models quickly
Custom Vulnerability Scanning Webhook
Customize your model security scanning with a quick integration with the Verta platform.
One-click vulnerability scanning for data scientists so they can quickly check all models before release
Receive a webhook with build information to scan, set up custom business rules and return a pass or fail result to Verta’s platform to give quick feedback to the data science teams
Other Enhancements and Resolved Issues
Model Service will no longer use Flask, and instead will leverage CherryPy. Older model endpoints running Flask will be supported and new model endpoings will leverage CherryPy.
We conducted our standard monthly vulnerability detection and remediation process
System Admin features for Verta customers have been hardened and system admins can now act as full users within the platform
Verta no longer supports Python 2.7 and 3.5, which have been retired
Deleting models via the UI now requires a long-press confirmation to reduce risks of outages or issues
Navigation has been slightly updated to feature a new tab system
Headers for Prediction Responses will now include endpoint owner information
August 2022
New Features
Updates to Platform Navigation: Our August release includes exciting UI enhancements featuring updated navigation. This update makes our platform more accessible and leaves more room for pages with a narrower, sleeker set of navigational tools. Here’s a few changes to be aware of:
Experiment Tracking can now be found under the Experiments (flask icon) and Data (database icon) tabs.
Endpoints has been renamed and can be on the Deployment tab (rocket icon)
Registry has been renamed Catalog and can be found under the Catalog tab (card icon)
Your profile and admin pages have been moved to the bottom left
You can now see a lifesaver icon that links to all help features in the platform
Workspace and Search remain in the top right corner
If you have any questions or feedback please let us know at help@verta.ai
Welcome Home to Homepage: With this release we’re introducing the platform Homepage, will will be your new landing page whenever you sign in:
For new users, homepage will show a Welcome widget (that they can dismiss) with helpful introductory steps and videos. You can always recall the Get Started widget under the new help lifesaver icon
Returning users will be shown a widget that summarizes the models currently being monitored for your current workspace, included summary stats on model traffic and alerts in the last 30 days, and a direct link to the models getting the most traffic this week.
We have more widgets coming soon, and if you have any questions or requests please contact help@verta.ai
Introducing Model Catalog: Model Registry is now Model Catalog - your organization’s unified repository of models in development and production:
All features of our model registry are available, and we’ve updated the landing page to be much friendlier to users of all types
Catalog lets you organize and attach models, model metadata, documentation, implementation details and compliance details in one place
Searchable, filterable and sortable so everyone can easily find live, in development and legacy models with no more shoulder-tapping of the ML or operations team
Increase the value of existing models by making them more accessible and reusable and reduce operational overhead spent compiling and documenting information about models
Other Enhancements and Resolved Issues
Automatic Alert Creation for Model Monitoring is now available, and alerts will be created as soon as you set up monitoring on an endpoint
There is a new event on the platform event system, the Promotion to Production event which allows you to set up automations when a model version is moved to production. Please contact help@verta.ai if you need access to this webhook.
We conducted the standard monthly vulnerability detection and remediation process
Admins may now configure Verta On Premises to set all model builds to generate fully self-contained images
July 2022
New Features
Monitoring Alerts: Automatically detect drift or model performance degradations with configurable alerting rules and get notified. Users can easily modify and/or create new rules. The platform will notify users when an alert threshold is crossed. Learn more: here
Monitor Regression Models: Model Monitoring in the Verta platform now supports an additional model type - regression models. This includes drift and outlier alerting for regression models. The platform will automatically compute performance metrics such as R-square, RMSE, MSE and MAE. Learn more: here
Support for SCIM provisioning: Customers can now integrate the Verta platform with their chosen SCIM provider (such as Active Directory or OKTA) to automatically provision, update and deactivate users and groups. Learn more: here
Other Enhancements and Resolved Issues
Monitoring - Customers can now set granular permissions on model monitors, including full RBAC system support
UI Enhancements - The platform will show many updated components to improve ease of use. The settings pages for sharing and visibility have been completely updated.
System Monitoring - The Verta platform now monitors model deployment and provides our Verta support engineers better insight into system instability.
Webhook Event Service ALPHA release - We are introducing a webhook event system to the Verta platform to allow for easier custom integrations. If you’d like to learn more or give feedback on the ALPHA please reach out to product@verta.ai
Vulnerability Remediation - We have a monthly security vulnerability identification and resolution process, which was followed this month.
Automated logging - The system powering automated audit logging has been updated to remove the need for Elasticsearch. This release also introduces a new folder structure to allow for secure isolation of different namespaces and easier searching of the audit logs.
Bug fixes
System admins can delete entities they own
External package configurations will not be deleted upon upgrade of dedicated Verta install
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