We're excited to announce Backend.AI 25.6, the first Long Term Support (LTS) release of 2025. This update brings significant improvements to system monitoring, audit logging, and model service auto-scaling, making operations more convenient than ever.

Release Policy Update: New Backend.AI Release Schedule Effective 2025

Beginning in 2025, new release rules will apply to Backend.AI. Long Term Support (LTS) versions will be released at the end of the first and third quarters each year. These LTS versions will focus on stability, receiving ongoing maintenance and bug fixes throughout the year. New features and enhancements will be introduced in separate releases, ensuring that LTS versions remain stable while revisions allowing for continued improvement in the platform.

New Dashboard layout

The Dashboard page has been updated with more powerful features than the existing Backend.AI Summary page. The Dashboard page provides various types of cards that allow you to monitor your resources and session status, including active sessions, available resources, and recently created session cards.

My Sessions card

Introducing the new My Session component, which categorizes your active sessions by type and displays summarized information. You can conveniently view interactive, batch, inference, and system sessions within a single card. It supports automatic refresh, updating session status every 15 seconds. For immediate refreshes, use the refresh button in the top-right corner.

Recently created session card

A new section has been added to the dashboard to display recently created sessions from the session list. This section also supports automatic refresh, updating session statuses every 15 seconds. For immediate refreshes, use the refresh button in the top-right corner.

Core System Updates and Enhancements

• Audit Logging System: You can now automatically track and record major activities within your system. See who did what and when at a glance, and receive email notifications when important events occur.
• Prometheus/Grafana Monitoring Integration: Real-time system monitoring is now available. With simple Docker Compose configuration, you can easily deploy Grafana and Prometheus to view resource usage and system performance through intuitive dashboards.
• Model Service Auto-scaling: Inference services now automatically scale resources based on traffic. By configuring auto-scaling rules, you can efficiently manage resources according to actual usage.
• Improved Image Management: You can now set fine-grained image access permissions per project. Additionally, images can be moved to trash instead of immediate deletion, allowing you to recover accidentally deleted images.
• VFolder Performance Improvements: Loading virtual folder(VFolder) lists is now significantly faster. A force delete option has also been added for cases where you need to bypass the trash bin.
• Container Permission Customization: You can now set container UID/GID per user. This is particularly useful in environments that require permission compatibility with existing data.
• Python 3.13 Support: Backend.AI now supports the latest Python 3.13. Enjoy faster asyncio performance and access to the newest Python features.
• Enhanced Security: Container security has been strengthened. With fine-grained seccomp profile application and Content Security Policy customization, you can configure the system to meet your security requirements.

Backend.AI will continue to make your AI research and development more convenient and secure.

Make your AI accessible with Backend.AI!

The full release notes for Backend.AI 25.6 (LTS) can be found on the Release History page.

Person in charge of this document: Jinho Heo, Jeongkyu Shin, Hyeokjin Kim