Wait for 0.10 or go to 0.9 first

[John Holland <jo...@objectpartners.com>]

At my current client they are on Kafka 0.8.2.2 and were looking at
upgrading to 0.9 for bug fixes mostly.  The new consumer is also enticing
but it has been said it's still "beta" quality which is a hard sell.

I'm considering recommending to wait for 0.10 in hopes that the new
consumer will be considered production ready.  Plus the timestamp feature,
rack awareness and kafka-streams all look like something that would be very
useful.

The release page says Q2 of this year, is it still on track for that?  Do
you recommend skipping 0.9 and going straight to 0.10?

I ask this because upgrading our clusters is something taken very seriously
due to how central Kafka is in the system and it comes with a lot of
scrutiny.

thanks for any input,
John

Re: Wait for 0.10 or go to 0.9 first

[Ismael Juma <is...@juma.me.uk>]

Hi Cees,

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 4:50 PM, Cees de Groot <ce...@pagerduty.com> wrote:

> FWIW we're using the new consumer in production. 0.9.0.0 had some glitches,
> but we haven't had issues with 0.9.0.1. YMMV, of course.
>

That's good to hear. We believe 0.9.0.1 to be a solid release indeed. Even
so, we are still debating whether to remove the beta label for the new
consumer for 0.10.0.0.

With respect to upgrading, as far as I understand, the Big Thing in 0.9 was
> the new consumer code, and in 0.10 will be Kafka streams. So the big
> upgrade for a regular consumer should be 0.8 -> 0.9, everything should work
> the same in 0.10 (at least, that's my expectation. We'll see whether I'm
> wrong ;-))
>

>From an API perspective, this is true. However, 0.10.0.0 introduces
timestamps and that changes the message format on disk (the old format is
stll supported as well). So, the broker side involves some planning as well.

Ismael

Re: Wait for 0.10 or go to 0.9 first

[Cees de Groot <ce...@pagerduty.com>]

FWIW we're using the new consumer in production. 0.9.0.0 had some glitches,
but we haven't had issues with 0.9.0.1. YMMV, of course.

With respect to upgrading, as far as I understand, the Big Thing in 0.9 was
the new consumer code, and in 0.10 will be Kafka streams. So the big
upgrade for a regular consumer should be 0.8 -> 0.9, everything should work
the same in 0.10 (at least, that's my expectation. We'll see whether I'm
wrong ;-))

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 11:54 AM, Ismael Juma <is...@juma.me.uk> wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> 0.10.0.0 is at the RC stage at the moment (two RCs have been released and
> we know that there will be a third one at least). There are never
> guarantees when it comes to dates, but it is very likely that the final
> release will happen in Q2.
>
> If upgrading is a big deal, as you say, then perhaps it makes sense to go
> straight to 0.10.0.0. Ideally you would run a RC in a test cluster to
> verify that there are no problems with it in your use-case.
>
> Ismael
>
> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 4:45 PM, John Holland <
> john.holland@objectpartners.com> wrote:
>
> > At my current client they are on Kafka 0.8.2.2 and were looking at
> > upgrading to 0.9 for bug fixes mostly.  The new consumer is also enticing
> > but it has been said it's still "beta" quality which is a hard sell.
> >
> > I'm considering recommending to wait for 0.10 in hopes that the new
> > consumer will be considered production ready.  Plus the timestamp
> feature,
> > rack awareness and kafka-streams all look like something that would be
> very
> > useful.
> >
> > The release page says Q2 of this year, is it still on track for that?  Do
> > you recommend skipping 0.9 and going straight to 0.10?
> >
> > I ask this because upgrading our clusters is something taken very
> seriously
> > due to how central Kafka is in the system and it comes with a lot of
> > scrutiny.
> >
> > thanks for any input,
> > John
> >
>



-- 
Cees de Groot
Principal Software Engineer
PagerDuty, Inc.

Re: Wait for 0.10 or go to 0.9 first

[Ismael Juma <is...@juma.me.uk>]

Hi John,

0.10.0.0 is at the RC stage at the moment (two RCs have been released and
we know that there will be a third one at least). There are never
guarantees when it comes to dates, but it is very likely that the final
release will happen in Q2.

If upgrading is a big deal, as you say, then perhaps it makes sense to go
straight to 0.10.0.0. Ideally you would run a RC in a test cluster to
verify that there are no problems with it in your use-case.

Ismael

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 4:45 PM, John Holland <
john.holland@objectpartners.com> wrote:

> At my current client they are on Kafka 0.8.2.2 and were looking at
> upgrading to 0.9 for bug fixes mostly.  The new consumer is also enticing
> but it has been said it's still "beta" quality which is a hard sell.
>
> I'm considering recommending to wait for 0.10 in hopes that the new
> consumer will be considered production ready.  Plus the timestamp feature,
> rack awareness and kafka-streams all look like something that would be very
> useful.
>
> The release page says Q2 of this year, is it still on track for that?  Do
> you recommend skipping 0.9 and going straight to 0.10?
>
> I ask this because upgrading our clusters is something taken very seriously
> due to how central Kafka is in the system and it comes with a lot of
> scrutiny.
>
> thanks for any input,
> John
>