Infinispan 10.0.0.Beta4

Dear Infinispan users,

it has been a while since our last release and quite a few things have been cooking in the Infinispan furnace. Bear in mind that the list below should just serve as a summary and that dedicated blogs, documentation and examples will appear in the near future.

Server

Since 5.3, our server has been built on top of WildFly (JBoss AS7 at the time). WildFly gave us a very solid base, including integration with a lot of useful components (security, datasources, management etc) but it also forced us to maintain a large amount of integration code. We have therefore decided to start from a much leaner base to build the new server which, internally we've been calling ServerNG, but which we're now releasing as "Infinispan Server". The old WildFly-based server is still available, but it should be considered "legacy" and will no longer receive any feature enhancements.

The new server deserves its own dedicated post, but its main features are:

• smaller size (36MB vs 130MB)
• smaller memory footprint (20MB heap usage at boot vs 40MB)
• single-port: the Hot Rod, REST and management endpoint are now served through a single-port (11222) with automatic protocol detection between HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 and Hot Rod. The memcached endpoint is handled separately since we don't implement the binary protocol yet.
• security implemented using WildFly Elytron currently supporting PLAIN, DIGEST-MD5, SCRAM, EXTERNAL mechs for Hot Rod, BASIC, DIGEST, CLIENT_CERT for REST/HTTP (OAuth/JWT/GS2/GSSAPI/SPNEGO will be coming in the next releases)
• the server configuration extends the embedded configuration scheme
• caches/counters are created and managed dynamically through Hot Rod / REST.

Marshalling

Infinispan's marshalling has received a significant overhaul and it is now split into three distinct marshallers: Internal, Persistence and User (ISPN-7409 ISPN-9621)
The Persistence marshaller is now based on ProtoBuf allowing for long-term compatibility of data stored in memory and in cache stores.
The Store Migrator has been updated to allow migration from Infinispan 8.x/9.x cache stores to the new format (ISPN-10276)

Core changes

Infinispan's internal dependency-injection has been completely rewritten so that factories, components and dependencies are discovered and resolved at compile time instead of using runtime reflection. This, together with the marshalling changes and recent JGroups changes, paves the way for usage and native compilation with Quarkus.

REST

The REST API is continuing its overhaul with the following additions to the v2 API

• Cluster Resource (ISPN-10268)
• Cache Resource (ISPN-9772 ISPN-10392)
• Counter Resource (ISPN-10151 ISPN-10152)

The REST endpoint now fully supports authorization (ISPN-8736)

Reactive API

The first implementation of our new Reactive API have been merged. This is still work in progress and the API will receive major changes until the Final release.
The new API includes a new API module and a new KeyValueStore Hot Rod client where search, continuous search and Key Value store methods are included.

Cross-Site Replication

Async mode cross-site replication received 2 major improvements:

• async mode is now able to detect disconnections between sites and bring the site offline based on <take-offline> configuration (ISPN-10180)
• track and exposes the average replication times for asynchronous requests (ISPN-9457)

Non-blocking

• Non-blocking Hot Rod authentication (ISPN-9841)
• Non-blocking REST endpoint (ISPN-10210)
• Update internal remote listener code to support non blocking (ISPN-9716)
• Update internal embedded listeners to be non blocking (ISPN-9715)

Removal/deprecations

A new major release is also an opportunity to do some house cleaning.

Deprecations

• Deprecate GridFileSystem and org.infinispan.io stream implementations (ISPN-10298)
• Deprecated Total Order transaction mode (ISPN-10259)

Removals

• AtomicMap implementations removed (ISPN-10230)
• Remove deprecated org.infinispan.io classes (ISPN-10297)
• Remove org.infinispan.tools.ConfigurationConverter (ISPN-10231)
• Remove compatibility mode (ISPN-10370)

If you are curious you can read the detailed release notes including all fixed issues.
As usual you can ask questions on the forum, StackOverflow and interactively on our Zulip Chat.
Please report any bugs you find on our Issue Tracker.
Going back to our three-week schedule, our next release will be Beta5, three weeks from now.

Infinispan Operator 0.3.0 expands container and security configuration!

Infinispan Operator 0.3.0 is now available with expanded configuration and security options:

Container Configuration

With this release of the Infinispan Operator, you can configure explicit CPU and memory limits for individual containers. The defaults are 0.5 CPUs and 512Mi of memory.

The Operator also lets you pass extra JVM options, which is useful for tracking native memory consumption or extra GC logging parameters.

Security Configuration

Starting with 0.3.0, credentials are automatically generated for data connector and management users when you instantiate the Infinispan Operator.

The default usernames are developer and admin for the data connector user and management user, respectively.

Generated passwords are stored in Kubernetes Secret instances. You can extract the passwords as follows:

For convenience, the default usernames are also stored in the secret. Using the jq command line tool, you can inspect both the username and password values with a single command:

If you want to set custom credentials for the data connector and management users, create Kubernetes Secret instances as follows:

When using a Credentials type authentication, the referenced secrets must contain username and password fields.

Trying It Out!

The easiest way to get started with the Infinispan Operator is via the simple tutorial. The Operator is compatible with vanilla Kubernetes environments, such as Minikube, as well as Red Hat OpenShift.

Available via Operator Hub

Install the Infinispan Operator directly from the Operator Hub, which is available out of the box on all OpenShift 4 versions. If you're using a vanilla Kubernertes environment, you might need to install the Operator Lifecycle Manager before you can install via the Operator Hub.

The Infinispan Operator is also included in the community for Kubernetes Operators is available from operatorhub.io.

What's Next?

The Operator configuration does not yet provide all capabilities available for Infinispan servers. We're working through a process of configuration specification that distills the server configuration into a simple, easy to use, set of configuration options. The current proposal is being discussed openly here.

Infinispan 10 brings a brand new server that's no longer based on WildFly. The Operator 0.x series will remain focused on Infinispan 9.x server, with Operator 1.x series focusing on Infinispan 10 and onwards.

Cheers,
Galder