Chapter 4. Feature enhancements

Cryostat 2.0 includes feature enhancements that build upon the Cryostat 1 offerings.

Cryostat web console GUI

You can access to the Cryostat information page through the Help icon in the upper-right corner of the Cryostat web console. On this console page, you can view your version of Cryostat.

Additionally, an archived record’s generated name now includes a target alias. The target alias improves record retrieval by linking an alias to the record’s generated name.

Cryostat Operator topology view

The Cryostat Operator now applies the correct app.openshift.io/connects-to annotation to a Cryostat deployment. This configuration links the Cryostat deployment with the Cryostat Operator deployment in the topology view on the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Cryostat Operator controller manager

If the Cryostat Operator failed to deploy Cryostat because you did not install cert-manager, the Cryostat Operator no longer hangs when it deletes Cryostat custom resources.

Cryostat cluster ConsoleLink namespace

In Cryostat 2.0, a Cryostat Operator cluster might create a duplicate ConsoleLink namespace for a Cryostat cluster. To avoid this issue, Cryostat Operator now replaces the GenerateName object with a SH256 hash value defined in Name object of the ConsoleLink resource definition.

Custom event templates

You can configure any Cryostat JFR recordings by using custom event templates. You can use custom event templates in the following ways:

Encode SSL/TLS certificates with supported formats

You can add an SSL/TLS certificate on the Cryostat web console for your target JVM application.

Valid SSL/TLS certificates are in DER-encoded base-64 or binary formats. Either format supports the following extensions:

You can now specify a generated certificate at runtime, so that your target JVM application can use the SSL/TLS for JMX connections. Cryostat attempts to open a JMX connection to a target JVM that uses an SSL/TLS certificate. For a successful JMX connection, Cryostat must pass all its authentication checks on the target JVM certificate that you provided at runtime .

You can use the POST handler to accept, validate and write the certificate.

Fabric8 Kubernetes and OpenShift clients

Cryostat 2.0 supports version 4.12.0 of Fabric8 Kubernetes and of OpenShift clients. This version enhances application compatibility with Cryostat and reduces downstream build errors.

Grafana container version

Cryostat 2.0 replaces version 6.4.4 of the Grafana container with version 7.3.6.

Grafana error messages

The 502 error message now relates to a failed JMX connection, while the 512 error messages relates to invalid responses sent to the JFR container.

Health check resource definition

Cryostat Operator replaces the api/v1/clienturl resource definition with the health resource definition. The Cryostat Operator now uses the health endpoint when performing containerized JVM health checks.

initialization-resource annotation

Cryostat Operator now includes an initialization-resource annotation in its CSV file’s configuration. This annotation enhances the Cryostat Operator instance running on the OpenShift Container Platform web console by providing you with graphical hints to create a Cryostat custom resource for your Cryostat cluster.

OLM bundle descriptors

For Cryostat 2.0, an OLM bundle no longer requires setting an integer value in its eventOptions descriptor for checking a JFR recording’s duration. Instead, the OLM bundle now uses requires duration formatted values that are defined in its EventOptions string.

Supported duration units include s, m, and h. For example, 2h15m denotes a JFR recording length of 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Security context constraint (SCC)

The Cryostat Operator now defaults to using the restricted SCC setting. A pod contained in a Cryostat cluster can now use any permitted fsGroup value listed under the restricted SCC setting. Meaning that Cryostat pods mounted to a persistent storage (PV) can now have read/write access to their directories.

A pod’s read/write access level depends on the pod’s fsGroup GID value, which the Cryostat Operator configures to adhere to the built-in restricted SecurityContextConstraint. A SecurityContext element contains pod-level security attributes.

Before Cryostat 2.0, the Cryostat Operator was set to the default setting, which caused fsGroup access issues for a pod running in a Cryostat cluster

For more information about the permitted range of fsGroup values for your Cryostat cluster, see About pre-allocated security context constraints values in the OpenShift documentation website.

ServiceRef definition

A ServiceRef definition includes the following new properties that Cryostat includes in all ServiceRef objects returned from GET communications with HTTP API handlers:

You can use the following two handlers create or delete a ServiceRef definition:

Subprocess management

Before Cryostat generates an automated analysis report, Cryostat creates a child subprocess. A child subprocess protects the parent process by accumulating any large memory loads consumed by the report generation.

For example, on a Linux operating system the out-of-memory (OOM) Killer detects a process that tries to request additional memory that is not available from the system and stops the process. If a child subprocess exists, the OOM Killer stops this subprocess but does not interfere with the running parent process.

You can set a minimum or maximum JVM heap size for a child subprocess by using the Cryostat environment variable: CRYOSTAT_REPORT_GENERATION_MAX_HEAP. Be aware that a low minimum value might stop a child subprocess before it generates a report, while a high maxumim value might cause additional memory constraints on the parent process.

Subprocess report generation

Cryostat 2.0 provides an enhancement to using either ActiveRecordingReportCache or ArchivedRecordingReportCache to generate a subprocessed report for your Java application. These classes are simplified as follows:

A subprocess no longer needs to complete the following tasks:

The removal of these tasks improves a subprocess’s workload in the following ways:

truststore environment variable

Cryostat 2.0 replaces TRUSTSTORE environment variable name with SSL_TRUSTSTORE_DIR.

TargetConnectionManager handler

The TargetConnectionManager now support concurrent connections by using a JMX connection timed cache value for any connections between a targeted request and Cryostat. By default, the timed cache is 90 seconds.

Vertx server response management

The Vertx server can now use a TimeoutHandler implementation to automatically end a delayed response message sent by a Cryostat request handler. This prevents a client from having to wait indefinitely for a response from a Cryostat request handler.

The TimeoutHandler implementation throws a 500 error message when it detects a delayed response from a Cryostat request handler.

WebSockets

The WebSocket includes the following updates:

When your WebSocket client connects to a one-way push NC, the client automatically receives information about actions performed by other connected clients on the same channel.