Chapter 1. Data Grid 8

Start the journey of migration to Data Grid 8 with a brief overview and a look at some of the basics.

1.1. Migration to Data Grid 8

Data Grid 8 introduces significant changes from previous Data Grid versions, including a whole new architecture for server deployments.

While this makes certain aspects of migration more challenging for existing environments, the Data Grid team believe that these changes benefit users by reducing deployment complexity and administrative overhead.

In comparison to previous versions, migration to Data Grid 8 means you gain:

  • Cloud-native design built for container platforms.
  • Lighter memory footprint and less overall resource usage.
  • Faster start times.
  • Increased security through smaller attack surface.
  • Better integration with Red Hat technologies and solutions.

And Data Grid 8 continues to give you the best possible in-memory datastorage capabilities built from tried and trusted, open-source technology.

1.2. Migration paths

This documentation focuses on Data Grid 7.3 to Data Grid 8 migration but is still applicable for 7.x versions, starting from 7.0.1.

If you are planning a migration from Data Grid 6, this document might not capture everything you need. You should contact Red Hat support for advice specific to your deployment before migrating.

As always, please let us know if we can help you by improving this documentation.

1.3. Component downloads

To start using Data Grid 8, you either:

  • Download components from the Red Hat customer portal if you are installing Data Grid on bare metal or other host environment.
  • Create an Data Grid Operator subscription if you are running on OpenShift.

This following information describes the available component downloads for bare metal deployments, which are different to previous versions of Data Grid.

Also see:

Maven repository

Data Grid 8 no longer provides separate downloads from the Red Hat customer portal for the following components:

  • Data Grid core libraries to create embedded caches in custom applications, referred to as "Library Mode" in previous versions.
  • Hot Rod Java client.
  • Utilities such as StoreMigrator.

Instead of making these components available as downloads, Data Grid provides Java artifacts through a Maven repository. This change means that you can use Maven to centrally manage dependencies, which provides better control over dependencies across projects.

You can download the Data Grid Maven repository from the customer portal or pull Data Grid dependencies from the public Red Hat Enterprise Maven repository. Instructions for both methods are available in the Data Grid documentation.

Data Grid Server

Data Grid Server is distributed as an archive that you can download and extract to host file systems.

The archive distribution contains the following top-level folders: 

├── bin 1
├── boot 2
├── docs 3
├── lib 4
├── server 5
└── static 6
1
Scripts to start and manage Data Grid Server as well as the Data Grid Command Line Interface (CLI).
2
Boot libraries.
3
Resources to help you configure and run Data Grid Server.
4
Run-time libraries for Data Grid Server. Note that this folder is intended for internal code only, not custom code libraries.
5
Root directory for Data Grid Server instances.
6
Static resources for Data Grid Console.

The server folder is the root directory for Data Grid Server instances and contains subdirectories for custom code libraries, configuration files, and data.

You can find more information about the filesystem and contents of the distributions in the Data Grid Server Guide.

Modules for JBoss EAP

You can use the modules for Red Hat JBoss EAP (EAP) to embed Data Grid caching functionality in your EAP applications.

Important

In EAP 7.4 applications can directly handle the infinispan subsystem without the need to separately install Data Grid modules. After EAP 7.4 GA is released, Data Grid will no longer provide EAP modules for download.

Red Hat still offers support if you want to build and use your own Data Grid modules. However, Red Hat recommends that you use Data Grid APIs directly with EAP 7.4 because modules:

  • Cannot use centrally managed Data Grid configuration that is shared across EAP applications.
    To use modules, you need to store configuration inside the application JAR or WAR.
  • Often result in Java classloading issues that require debugging and additional overhead to implement.

You can find more information about the EAP modules that Data Grid provides in the Data Grid Developer Guide.

Tomcat session client

The Tomcat session client lets you externalize HTTP sessions from JBoss Web Server (JWS) applications to Data Grid via the Apache Tomcat org.apache.catalina.Manager interface.

Hot Rod Node.js client

The Hot Rod Node.js client is a reference JavaScript implementation for use with Data Grid Server clusters.

Source code

Uncompiled source code for each Data Grid release.