This release includes several enhancements to Data Grid Server.

Customizable Server Filesystem

Data Grid Server now includes system properties that override the default location for folders under the server root directory.

Set System Properties from File

You can now use set system properties for Data Grid Server from file with the -P and --properties options, for example:

$ ./bin/server.sh -P path/to/system.properties

Run as System Service

Data Grid Server provides system init files so you can run server instances as services on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

See Run JBoss Data Grid 7 as a RHEL 7 Service (Red Hat Knowledgebase) for more information.

Port Offset Takes Effect for Cluster Transport

When you specify a port offset for Data Grid Server, that port offset now applies to jgroups.bind.port and jgroups.mcast.port.

This release includes several enhancements to Data Grid Operator.

Configuring Anti-Affinity for Data Grid Nodes

Anti-affinity settings protect workloads from single points of failure.

Data Grid Operator provides a spec.affinity field in your Infinispan CR that configures anti-affinity capabilities.

Disable Encryption

You can now disable encryption for client connections.

security:
  endpointEncryption:
          type: None

Install into Multiple Namespaces

As of this release, you can install Data Grid Operator into specific namespaces or multiple namespaces.

Configure the Command Line Interface (CLI) with command aliases and custom startup properties. You can also define the location on your filesystem where the CLI stores configuration.

In previous releases, Data Grid used a Java ThreadPoolExecutor class to manage the blocking thread pool. As of this release, Data Grid replaces ThreadPoolExecutor with an EnhancedQueueExecutor class that allocates new threads only if there are no idle threads. This change improves the efficiency of the non-blocking thread pool usage by ensuring that threads are allocated only when necessary.

Data Grid 8.1.1 upgrades the ProtoStream API 4.3.4.

Data Grid documentation is updated to include the following content:

See Configuring Cross-Site Replication on OpenShift.

Find out complete details and learn how Data Grid detects and resolves conflicts in the documentation.

See Concurrent Writes and Conflicting Entries.

As of 8.1, you can set multiple site masters in your RELAY2 configuration to balance inter-cluster traffic. Use the max_site_masters attribute as in the following example:

<relay.RELAY2 site="NYC" 1
              max_site_masters="100"/> 2

See Setting Up Cross-Site Replication.

Data Grid Server 8.1 offers enhanced security and new configuration options.

See Adding Data Grid Credentials to create usernames and passwords for accessing the Data Grid Console, Command Line Interface (CLI), REST API, or Hot Rod endpoint.

See Securing Access to Data Grid Servers to learn about configuring different authentication mechanisms.

See Configuring Data Grid Server Data Sources.

<infinispan>
   <cache-container name="default">
      <security>
         <authorization> 1
            <identity-role-mapper/>
            <role name="AdminRole" permissions="ALL"/>
            <role name="ReaderRole" permissions="READ"/>
            <role name="WriterRole" permissions="WRITE"/>
            <role name="SupervisorRole" permissions="READ WRITE EXEC BULK_READ"/>
         </authorization>
      </security>
      <distributed-cache name="secured">
         <security>
            <authorization/> 2
         </security>
      </distributed-cache>
   </cache-container>
   ...
</infinispan>

See Configuring Data Grid Authorization.

Data Grid 8.1 CLI provides additional capabilities for server configuration, user management, and troubleshooting.

The user command lets you manage user credentials and groups for property-based security realms. For example, the following commands adds credentials that have "admin" privileges:

[disconnected]> user create myusername --password=qwer1234! --groups=admin

See Adding Data Grid Credentials.

[hostname@cluster//containers/default]> logging set --level=DEBUG org.infinispan

See Changing Data Grid Server Logging Configuration at Runtime.

Use the report command with the CLI as in the following example:

[hostname@cluster//containers/default]> server report
Downloaded report 'infinispan-hostname-timestamp-report.tar.gz'

See Getting Diagnostic Reports for Data Grid Servers.

Data Grid 8.1 Console provides additional capabilities such as:

For information on accessing the Data Grid Console and creating caches, see Creating Caches with the Data Grid Console.

Calling the Data Grid REST API with the ?action URL parameter is now supported with the POST method. Calls return status 200 if responses contain content or status 204 if not.

Support for the ?action URL parameter with the GET method is planned for removal.

hotrod[s]://[user[:password]@]host[:port][,host2[:port]][?property=value[&property2=value2]]

This provides a more compact way for configuring your Hot Rod Java client connections. See Hot Rod Client Configuration.

See Creating Caches on First Access.

Data Grid indexing and querying capabilities have undergone changes that decrease configuration overhead and offer better performance when searching the data store.

Major changes include:

Data Grid no longer supports native objects for Apache Lucene and Hibernate Search. Use the org.infinispan.query.Search class as your entry point for string-based searches with the Ickle query language.

See the following:

Data Grid 8.1 deprecates several configuration attributes to streamline user options and improve consistency between declarative and programmatic settings.

memory configuration is the most notable change in Data Grid 8.1. It lets you configure the data container to:

As in previous releases, the memory configuration can also configure Data Grid to store entries in binary format. However, as of 8.1, binary storage configuration is deprecated. Instead you should define the encoding for caches. If you want to use binary storage, specify the MediaType for any binary format in your cache definition.

Data Grid consolidates thread pools into two:

As of this release, nearly all Data Grid internal components use the non- blocking thread pool, which increases throughput, reduces latency, and improves overall responsiveness for heavy I/O workloads.

Any blocking I/O paths, now use the blocking thread pool to avoid holding up non-blocking calls.

To handle blocking operations, Data Grid provides a BlockingManager utility class.

See the following:

Data Grid Modules for Red Hat JBoss EAP provide a temporary solution until planned functionality for Red Hat JBoss EAP to directly manage the infinispan subsystem is available.

See Data Grid Modules for Red Hat JBoss EAP.