What's New in Release 7.9

Describes the new features in release 7.9 and provides links to more information.

IMPORTANT
Hewlett Packard Enterprise offers a consumption-based version of the HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric. See SaaS-Based HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric. To view information for the consumption-based Data Fabric platform, see this website.

New Features

Following are some new features and capabilities that distinguish release 7.9.0 from the previous release (7.8.0):
New Feature or Capability Supported on See for more information . . .
DF SaaS? Customer Managed?
Support for user-defined roles Yes No Administering Identities**

acl
Runbook for Data Fabric cloud configurations Yes No Coming soon
Support for C API Librdkafka for HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Streams No Yes HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Streams C Applications

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Streams C Client 2.0.2 Release Notes
Updates to Insight services Yes Yes Configuring Data Fabric to Track User Behavior

insight

setloglevel insight
Support for RHEL 9.4 Yes Yes Operating System Support Matrix

Operating System Support Matrix**
Remove nodes from a fabric Yes No Removing Nodes (On-premises Deployment)**

installer clusterremovenode
Identity access management Yes No Administering IAM Policies**

*Requires using the Data Fabric UI. With release 7.3.0 and later, you can use the Data Fabric UI on customer-managed clusters. To understand the limitations and benefits of doing so, see Data Fabric UI.

**Indicates a link to the Data Fabric as-a-service documentation.

Librdkafka Updated to Version 2.0.2

Beginning with release 7.9.0 and EEP 9.3.1, librdkafka is now updated to version 2.0.2.

IMPORTANT
*Librdkafka 2.0.2 in core 7.9 is not compatible with HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Stream clients for Python1 or C#2 applications. Nodes running Python or C# applications should not be upgraded to HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric 7.9.

1HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Streams Python Applications

2HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Streams C#/.NET Applications

Monitoring Packages Moved to Core Repository

Beginning with release 7.8.0 and EEP 9.3.0, the monitoring components are provided in the Data Fabric (core) repository and are not present in the EEP repository. Monitoring packages include the following:
  • mapr-collectd
  • mapr-elasticsearch
  • mapr-fluentd
  • mapr-grafana
  • mapr-kibana
  • mapr-opentsdb
For example, the RHEL monitoring packages for release 7.8.0 can be found at:
https://package.ezmeral.hpe.com/releases/v7.8.0/redhat/
The RHEL monitoring packages are not present in the repository for EEP 9.3.0 at: 
https://package.ezmeral.hpe.com/releases/MEP/MEP-9.3.0/redhat/
The same is true for the monitoring packages for Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, SLES, and Oracle Enterprise Linux.

New Repository for NFS v4 on SLES 15

In release 7.8.0 and later, the /releases directory of package.ezmeral.hpe.com includes two suse repositories:

The suse15.5 repository is new and enables support for NFS or NFS v4 for installations on SLES 15 SP3 and SP5. To use the old and new suse repositories, see this table:
Repository Use this respository to install NFS Support
suse SLES 15 SP2 NFS
suse15.5 SLES 15 SP3 or SP4 or SP5 NFS or NFS v4

New Key for Signature Verification for Data Fabric Files

Release 7.6.1 implemented a new key for .rpm, .tar.gz, .zip, and .tgz files for the following Data Fabric products:
  • HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric core 7.6.1 and later
  • HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric clients
  • HPE Ezmeral Ecosystem Pack (EEP) 9.2.1 and later
  • Installer 1.18.0.5 and later
Before you install these products, you must import the HPE GPG public keys. This is a one-time operation on each node where packages are installed. Importing the keys allows you to, optionally, verify the GPG and RPM signatures for the products. A verified GPG or RPM signature attests that the product you received has been signed with digital private keys held only by HPE. Successful signature verification also ensures that the file has not been altered after it was signed and released by HPE.

For more information, see HPE GPG Public Keys for GPG or RPM Signature Verification.

Product Name Change: HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric – Customer Managed

With release 7.3.0, the user-managed version of the platform changed its name to HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric – Customer Managed. "HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric" now refers to the as-a-service version of the platform, described later on this page. Documentation for the customer-managed platform remains on the website you are currently using.

SaaS-Based HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric

Release 7.3.0 introduced a new HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric that can be used "as-a-service" and provides consumption-based pricing. Documentation for the new platform has its own website. For more information, see:

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Documentation

The new as-a-service HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric leverages the strengths of its predecessor, the HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric – Customer Managed platform. The as-a-service platform improves on its predecessor in many ways. The following table compares the platforms:
Feature HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric – Customer Managed
Distributed File System Yes Yes
Global Namespace (GNS) Yes No
Object Support Yes Yes
Table Support Yes Yes
Event Stream Support Yes Yes
NFSv4 Support* Yes Yes
Container Storage Interface (CSI) Support Yes Yes
Database Support Yes Yes
Client Support Yes Yes
Single Sign-On (SSO) Support Yes Yes
Rolling Upgrades Managed by HPE User managed
Billing and Licensing Consumption-only and some form of term (term-only not supported) Consumption and Term
Air-Gap Support Yes Yes
Graphical User Interface Data Fabric UI or Control System Data Fabric UI or Control System
maprcli Command Line Yes Yes
Scale (number of nodes per fabric / cluster) See note ** Thousands of nodes
EEP (HPE Ezmeral Ecosystem Pack) No Yes
OpenTelemetry (OTel) Yes Yes
*NFSv3 is not supported.

**For cloud deployments, the nodes and instances are predetermined based on the storage tier that you select during installation. While new fabrics can be added at any time, adding nodes after fabric creation is not currently supported for cloud deployments. For on-premises deployments, you determine the number of nodes at create time. You can add nodes later by using the steps in Adding Nodes.

New Repository for Data Fabric Software

On August 1, 2023, Hewlett Packard Enterprise introduced a new download repository for the HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric core and ecosystem software packages. https://package.ezmeral.hpe.com/ is the new repository for HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric downloads. For all Data Fabric releases, https://package.ezmeral.hpe.com/ replaces two older repositories:
Description URL Authentication Required?
New repository https://package.ezmeral.hpe.com/ Yes
Old repositories https://package.mapr.com/

https://package.mapr.hpe.com

 Yes1

1Beginning October 2023, the old repositories are redirected to the new repository URL, which requires authentication.

The new repository requires you to provide the email and token for your HPE Passport account. Software that points to the old repositories must be updated to include your HPE Passport email and token. For more information about using the new repository, see Using the HPE Ezmeral Token-Authenticated Internet Repository.

If you plan to use the Data Fabric Installer, you must update the Installer to the most current 1.18.0.3 version or later. Earlier versions of the Installer will not work with the new repository. See Updating the Installer.

HPE Ezmeral Ecosystem Pack (EEP) Support

Release 7.9.0 requires EEP 9.3.1 or later. EEP 9.3.1 is new for this release and delivers updates to various ecosystem components but no new components. EEP 9.3.1 can be used with release 7.8.0 and 7.9.0. However, the version of librdkafka provided by EEP 9.3.1 is not compatible with release 7.8.0. EEP 9.3.1 provides librdkafka version 2.0.2. Release 7.8.0 supports only librdkafka version 0.11.3. For this reason, you cannot use the Installer to install EEP 9.3.1 on a release 7.8.0 cluster. Manually upgrading a 7.8.0 cluster to EEP 9.3.1 is possible and allows the use of EEP 9.3.1 components other than librdkafka on release 7.8.0.

For more information about new features delivered as part of the Ecosystem Pack, see What's New in EEP 9.3.1. For reference information, see EEP 9.3.1 Reference Information.

For information about the EEPs that can be used with different versions of core releases, see EEP Support and Lifecycle Status.

SSO Support for Keycloak

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric release 7.9.0 supports SSO when configured with the Keycloak identity and access management (IAM) solution. Other IAM solutions are not currently supported.

Configuring SSO is optional. If you do not configure SSO, you must use Data Fabric user names and passwords for access to the fabric. While SSO is supported for Data Fabric core, it is not currently supported for ecosystem components or the Installer.

Beginning with release 7.5.0, Keycloak is preconfigured and preinstalled if you:
  • Install the mapr-keycloak package as part of cluster creation
  • Specify the -keycloak option when you run the configure.sh script

For more information, see Configuring SSO.

Data Access Gateway 6.3.0.2 Support

For the gateway to lightweight client applications, release 7.9.0 requires Data Access Gateway 6.3.0.2. Data Access Gateway 6.3.0.2 can be used with core 7.9.0, 7.8.0, 7.7.0, 7.6.1, 7.5.0, 7.4.0, 7.3.0, and 7.2.0 with some restrictions. However, Data Access Gateway 6.3.0.2 is part of EEP 9.3.1, and EEP 9.3.1 is currently supported only for use with core 7.8.0 and 7.9.0.
CAUTION
Streams users who upgrade from release 7.1.0 (DAG 5.0) or release 7.2.0 (DAG 5.1) to one of the following releases will not be able to access topics configured using the pre-DAG 6.0 mapping rules:
  • 7.9.0 (DAG 6.3.0.2)
  • 7.8.0 (DAG 6.3.0.1)
  • 7.7.0 (DAG 6.3)
  • 7.6.1 (DAG 6.2)
  • 7.5.0 (DAG 6.2)
  • 7.4.0 (DAG 6.1)
  • 7.3.0 (DAG 6.0)

For more information, see Understanding the HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Data Access Gateway and the Data Access Gateway 6.3.0.2 Release Notes.

JDK 17 Support

As indicated in the Java Support Matrix, release 7.9.0 can be used in JDK 11 or in JDK 17 installations. EEP 9.3.1 can also be used in JDK 11 or JDK 17 installations. However, the Installer is supported only on JDK 11, and if new cluster nodes require a JDK at installation time, the Installer can only install JDK 11.