vFabric GemFire 6.6.4 Release Notes

What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

• What's New in vFabric GemFire 6.6.4
• Upgrading to vFabric GemFire 6.6.4
• Resolved Issues
• Known Issues

What's New in vFabric GemFire 6.6.4

vFabric GemFire 6.6.4 addresses a compatibility issue with vFabric GemFire 6.6.3 and earlier clients that connect to vFabric GemFire 7.0 servers. If you are running vFabric GemFire 6.6.X and want to upgrade your servers to vFabric GemFire 7.0 while keeping your clients at 6.6.x, you should first upgrade both servers and clients to vFabric GemFire 6.6.4. This ensures that your 6.6 clients can still connect to GemFire 7.0 servers during your upgrade. For additional details on this issue, see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2039980.

Note: If you plan to immediately upgrade all your clients and servers to vFabric GemFire 7.0, you do not need to upgrade to vFabric GemFire 6.6.4.

GemFire 6.6.4 includes numerous bug fixes and performance enhancements. For a list of specific bugs that were fixed, see Resolved Issues.

This release also incorporates changes and enhancements from vFabric GemFire 6.6.0 and 6.6.1, vFabric GemFire 6.6.2, and vFabric GemFire 6.6.3.

vFabric GemFire HTTP Session Management Modules Changes

vFabric GemFire 6.6.4 includes updates to the GemFire HTTP Session Managment Modules. Version 2.1.2 of the modules is now available for download from the vFabric GemFire 6.6.4 product download page. This section describes what's new in this release of the GemFire HTTP Session Management Modules.

• JSP file changes. JSP pages no longer need to extend JspWrapper. The JspWrapper class has been removed from the package.
• Changes to web.xml configuration. You no longer need to wrap servlet definitions using ServletWrapper. The ServletWrapper class has been removed from the package. In addition, you do not need to pass any defined listeners as parameters to the GemFire filter. Listeners should remain defined as <listener> elements.
• Changes to the modify_war script.
  • The default action is now to bundle all required jars within the generated .war or .ear file. Use the -x option if this is not the desired behavior.
  • The modify_war now provides better support for .ear files. In particular, it bundles all additional jars inside the .ear file. Previously, you were required to place those JARs in the application server classpath. By default, each embedded war file's MANIFEST.MF file will be modified to include a Class-Path attribute that references the shared jars.
  • Some options for the modify_war script have changed. Run the script with -h option to see a full list and description of each option.
• slf4j. The GemFire Modules use slf4j for logging. Bindings are provided for jdk14, log4j12, and a custom binding for use with WebLogic. When running modify_war, you must include an appropriate binding jar file with either the -e or -j option depending on whether you are processing a .war or .ear file respectively.
• Performance changes. Although this release improves the usability aspects of the module, it does introduce an increased memory overhead for cached sessions. If you experience OutOfMemory errors, consider limiting the number of cached sessions that are held in the local cache. This applies in particular to client server configurations. The following cache.xml example limits the number of cached entries to 1000.

  <region name="gemfire_modules_sessions" refid="CACHING_PROXY_HEAP_LRU">
     <region-attributes>
        <eviction-attributes>
          <lru-entry-count maximum="1000"/>
        </eviction-attributes>
     </region-attributes>
  </region>

Upgrading to vFabric GemFire 6.6.4

To upgrade from an earlier version of GemFire to vFabric GemFire 6.6.4, see Upgrading vFabric GemFirein the vFabric GemFire User's Guide and review product changes documented in What's New in vFabric GemFire 6.6.4.

In addition, if you are upgrading to vFabric GemFire 6.6.4 from a version of GemFire earlier than 6.6.0, see the vFabric GemFire 6.6.1 and 6.6.0 Release Notes, vFabric GemFire 6.6.2 Release Notes, and vFabric GemFire 6.6.3 Release Notes to determine what changes are required for you to migrate applications to vFabric GemFire 6.6.4.

Note: Starting in 6.6.2, GemFire uses a new PDX serialization format. If you use PDX serialization and are performing a rolling upgrade from GemFire 6.6.0 or GemFire 6.6.1 to GemFire 6.6.4, you must set the system property -Dgemfire.serializationVersion=6.6.0 or -Dgemfire.serializationVersion=6.6.1 (as appropriate) on each member that is being upgraded to 6.6.4. See Upgrading to GemFire 6.6.2 in the vFabric GemFire 6.6.2 Release Notes for additional details. If you are upgrading from GemFire 6.6.2 to 6.6.3 or GemFire 6.6.3 to 6.6.4, you do not need to set the -Dgemfire.serializationVersion system property.

Resolved Issues

For a list of bugs that are fixed in vFabric GemFire 6.6.4 and that are resolved in the VMware bug tracking system, see BugsFixedGemFire664.html.

In addition, the following issue has been resolved:

• Modified logging level to FINE from SSL socket creation to suppress logging noise.

Known Issues

For a list of issues that have been registered as bugs in the VMware bug tracking system, see BugNotesGemFire664.html.