Chapter 1. Features

AMQ Streams 2.4 is supported on OpenShift Container Platform 4.10 to 4.13.

For more information about the supported platform versions, see the AMQ Streams Supported Configurations.

AMQ Streams now supports Apache Kafka version 3.4.0.

AMQ Streams uses Kafka 3.4.0. Only Kafka distributions built by Red Hat are supported.

You must upgrade the Cluster Operator to AMQ Streams version 2.4 before you can upgrade brokers and client applications to Kafka 3.4.0. For upgrade instructions, see Upgrading AMQ Streams.

Refer to the Kafka 3.4.0 Release Notes for additional information.

For more information on supported versions, see the AMQ Streams Component Details.

The v1beta2 API version for all custom resources was introduced with AMQ Streams 1.7. For AMQ Streams 1.8, v1alpha1 and v1beta1 API versions were removed from all AMQ Streams custom resources apart from KafkaTopic and KafkaUser.

Upgrade of the custom resources to v1beta2 prepares AMQ Streams for a move to Kubernetes CRD v1, which is required for Kubernetes v1.22.

If you are upgrading from an AMQ Streams version prior to version 1.7:

This release introduces the StableConnectIdentities feature gate, which is disabled by default. This feature gate is at an alpha level of maturity, and should be treated as a developer preview.

The StableConnectIdentities feature gate controls the use of StrimziPodSet resources to manage Kafka Connect and Kafka MirrorMaker 2 pods instead of using OpenShift Deployment resources. This helps to minimize the number of rebalances of connector tasks.

To enable the StableConnectIdentities feature gate, specify +StableConnectIdentities as a value for the STRIMZI_FEATURE_GATES environment variable in the Cluster Operator configuration.

env:
  - name: STRIMZI_FEATURE_GATES
    value: +StableConnectIdentities

See StableConnectIdentities feature gate.

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) are standards for computer security and interoperability. From this release, AMQ Streams can run on FIPS-enabled OpenShift clusters without special configuration and automatically switches to FIPS mode.

Prior to this release, running AMQ Streams on FIPS-enabled OpenShift clusters was possible only by disabling FIPS mode using the FIPS_MODE environment variable in the deployment configuration for the Cluster Operator. If you are currently running AMQ Streams on a FIPS-enabled OpenShift cluster with the FIPS_MODE set to disabled, to be FIPs-compliant you can enable it when upgrading to AMQ Streams 2.4.

A couple of things to note when running AMQ Streams in FIPS mode:

See the following:

A new configuration property enables automatic restarts of failed connectors and tasks for Kafka Connect and Kafka MirrorMaker 2. If the autoRestart property is set to true, up to seven restart attempts are made, after which restarts must be made manually.

For Kafka Connect connectors, you configure the autoRestart property in the KafkaConnector custom resource.

apiVersion: kafka.strimzi.io/v1beta2
kind: KafkaConnector
metadata:
  name: my-source-connector
  labels:
    strimzi.io/cluster: my-connect-cluster
spec:
  class: org.apache.kafka.connect.file.FileStreamSourceConnector
  tasksMax: 2
  autoRestart:
    enabled: true
  config:
    file: "/opt/kafka/LICENSE"
    topic: my-topic
    # ...

For MirrorMaker 2 connectors, you configure the autoRestart property in the KafkaMirrorMaker2 custom resource. You can enable automatic restarts for each of the internal connectors used by MirrorMaker 2: sourceConnector, heartbeatConnector, and checkpointConnector.

apiVersion: kafka.strimzi.io/v1beta2
kind: KafkaMirrorMaker2
metadata:
  name: my-mm2-cluster
spec:
  mirrors:
  - sourceConnector:
      autoRestart:
        enabled: true
      # ...
    heartbeatConnector:
      autoRestart:
        enabled: true
      # ...
    checkpointConnector:
      autoRestart:
        enabled: true
      # ...

See AutoRestart schema properties.

AMQ Streams 2.4 is enabled to run on IBM Z and LinuxONE s390x architecture.

Support for IBM Z and LinuxONE applies to AMQ Streams running with Kafka on OpenShift Container Platform 4.10 and later.

AMQ Streams 2.4 is enabled to run on IBM Power ppc64le architecture.

Support for IBM Power applies to AMQ Streams running with Kafka on OpenShift Container Platform 4.10 and later.

The Red Hat build of Debezium is a distributed change data capture platform. It captures row-level changes in databases, creates change event records, and streams the records to Kafka topics. Debezium is built on Apache Kafka. You can deploy and integrate the Red Hat build of Debezium with AMQ Streams. Following a deployment of AMQ Streams, you deploy Debezium as a connector configuration through Kafka Connect. Debezium passes change event records to AMQ Streams on OpenShift. Applications can read these change event streams and access the change events in the order in which they occurred.

Debezium has multiple uses, including:

Debezium provides connectors (based on Kafka Connect) for the following common databases:

For more information on deploying Debezium with AMQ Streams, refer to the Red Hat build of Debezium documentation.

You can use the Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry as a centralized store of service schemas for data streaming. For Kafka, you can use the Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry to store Apache Avro or JSON schema.

Apicurio Registry provides a REST API and a Java REST client to register and query the schemas from client applications through server-side endpoints.

Using Apicurio Registry decouples the process of managing schemas from the configuration of client applications. You enable an application to use a schema from the registry by specifying its URL in the client code.

For example, the schemas to serialize and deserialize messages can be stored in the registry, which are then referenced from the applications that use them to ensure that the messages that they send and receive are compatible with those schemas.

Kafka client applications can push or pull their schemas from Apicurio Registry at runtime.

For more information on using the Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry with AMQ Streams, refer to the Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry documentation.