Release Notes for AMQ Streams 2.6 on RHEL

AMQ Streams now supports and uses Apache Kafka version 3.6.0. Only Kafka distributions built by Red Hat are supported.

For upgrade instructions, see AMQ Streams and Kafka upgrades.

Refer to the Kafka 3.6.0 Release Notes for additional information.

Kafka 3.5.x is supported only for the purpose of upgrading to AMQ Streams 2.6.

Kafka 3.6.0 uses ZooKeeper version 3.8.3, which is a different version to Kafka 3.5.x. We recommend that you perform a rolling update to use the new binaries.

For an overview of the enhancements introduced with Kafka 3.6.0, refer to the Kafka 3.6.0 Release Notes.

The includeAcceptHeader configuration property has been added as an OAuth 2.0 server-side and client-side configuration option. Some authorization servers have issues with clients sending Accept: application/json headers. By setting oauth.include.accept.header="false", the header is not sent. The default setting is true.

See Using OAuth 2.0 token-based authentication and Using OAuth 2.0 token-based authorization.

Apache Kafka is in the process of phasing out the need for ZooKeeper. You can now try deploying a Kafka cluster in KRaft (Kafka Raft metadata) mode without ZooKeeper as a technology preview.

Currently, the KRaft mode in AMQ Streams has the following major limitations:

See Running Kafka in KRaft mode.

Use the technology preview of the Kafka Static Quota plugin to set throughput and storage limits on brokers in your Kafka cluster. You can set a byte-rate threshold and storage quotas to put limits on the clients interacting with your brokers.

client.quota.callback.class= io.strimzi.kafka.quotas.StaticQuotaCallback
client.quota.callback.static.produce= 1000000
client.quota.callback.static.fetch= 1000000
client.quota.callback.static.storage.soft= 400000000000
client.quota.callback.static.storage.hard= 500000000000
client.quota.callback.static.storage.check-interval= 5

See Setting limits on brokers using the Kafka Static Quota plugin.

Support for Java 8 was deprecated in Kafka 3.0.0 and AMQ Streams 2.0. Support for Java 8 was removed in AMQ Streams 2.4.0. This applies to all AMQ Streams components, including clients.

AMQ Streams supports Java 11 and Java 17. Use Java 11 or 17 when developing new applications. Plan to migrate any applications that currently use Java 8 to Java 11 or 17.

If you want to continue using Java 8 for the time being, AMQ Streams 2.2 provides Long Term Support (LTS). For information on the LTS terms and dates, see the AMQ Streams LTS Support Policy.

Support for OpenTracing is now removed.

The Jaeger clients are now retired and the OpenTracing project archived. As such, we cannot guarantee their support for future Kafka versions.

OpenTelemetry has replaced OpenTracing for distributed tracing.

See Setting up distributed tracing.

Identity replication policy is a feature used with MirrorMaker 2 to override the automatic renaming of remote topics. Instead of prepending the name with the source cluster’s name, the topic retains its original name. This setting is particularly useful for active/passive backups and data migration scenarios.

To implement an identity replication policy, you must specify a replication policy class (replication.policy.class) in the MirrorMaker 2 configuration. Previously, you could specify the io.strimzi.kafka.connect.mirror.IdentityReplicationPolicy class included with the AMQ Streams mirror-maker-2-extensions component. However, this component is now deprecated and will be removed in the future. Therefore, it is recommended to update your implementation to use Kafka’s own replication policy class (org.apache.kafka.connect.mirror.IdentityReplicationPolicy).

See Using AMQ Streams with MirrorMaker 2.

Kafka MirrorMaker replicates data between two or more active Kafka clusters, within or across data centers. Kafka MirrorMaker 1 was deprecated in Kafka 3.0.0 and will be removed in Kafka 4.0.0. MirrorMaker 2 will be the only version available. MirrorMaker 2 is based on the Kafka Connect framework, connectors managing the transfer of data between clusters.

As a result, MirrorMaker 1 has also been deprecated in AMQ Streams as well. If you are using MirrorMaker 1 (referred to as just MirrorMaker in the AMQ Streams documentation), use MirrorMaker 2 with the IdentityReplicationPolicy class. MirrorMaker 2 renames topics replicated to a target cluster. IdentityReplicationPolicy configuration overrides the automatic renaming. Use it to produce the same active/passive unidirectional replication as MirrorMaker 1.

See Using AMQ Streams with MirrorMaker 2.

When running AMQ Streams in FIPS mode with JMX authentication enabled, clients may fail authentication. To work around this issue, do not enable JMX authentication while running in FIPS mode. We are investigating the issue and working to resolve it in a future release.

The following platforms are tested for AMQ Streams 2.6 running with Kafka on the version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) stated.

Platforms are tested with Open JDK 11 and 17. The IBM JDK is supported but not regularly tested against during each release. Open JDK 8, Oracle JDK 8 & 11, and IBM JDK 8 are not supported.

Only client libraries built by Red Hat are supported for AMQ Streams. Currently, AMQ Streams only provides a Java client library.

Clients are tested with Open JDK 11 and 17.

In AMQ Streams, only the following components released directly from the Apache Software Foundation are supported:

See also, Chapter 9, Supported integration with Red Hat products.

Kafka requires block storage; file storage options like NFS are not compatible.

AMQ Streams supports the use of OAuth 2.0 token-based authorization through Red Hat Single Sign-On Authorization Services, which allows you to manage security policies and permissions centrally.

Revised on 2023-12-19 17:46:56 UTC