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.
Source code
Uncompiled source code for each Data Grid release.