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@danielmewes danielmewes released this 16 Jul 16:54
· 2152 commits to next since this release
v2.1.0-0BETA1
37c8d99

This is a beta release for RethinkDB 2.1. It is not for production use and has known
bugs. Please do not use this version for production data.

We are looking forward to your bug reports on GitHub
or on our mailing list.

Release highlights:

  • Automatic failover using a Raft-based protocol
  • More flexible administration for servers and tables
  • Advanced recovery features

Read the blog post for more details.

Download

Update 07/27/2015: The server downloads have been updated to include additional bug fixes and improvements.

1. Download the server

2. Download a driver

JavaScript

$ npm install http://download.rethinkdb.com/dev/2.1.0-0BETA1/rethinkdb-2.1.0-BETA1.nodejs.tgz

Python

$ pip install http://download.rethinkdb.com/dev/2.1.0-0BETA1/rethinkdb-2.1.0beta1.python.tar.gz

Ruby

$ wget http://download.rethinkdb.com/dev/2.1.0-0BETA1/rethinkdb-2.1.0.beta.1.gem
$ gem install rethinkdb-2.1.0.beta.1.gem

Compatibility

This beta release does not include automatic migration of data
directories from older versions of RethinkDB. The final release of RethinkDB 2.1 will
automatically migrate data from RethinkDB 1.14 and up.

If you're upgrading directly from RethinkDB 1.13 or earlier, you will need to manually
upgrade using rethinkdb dump.

Changed handling of server failures

This release introduces a new system for dealing with server failures and network
partitions based on the Raft consensus algorithm.

Previously, unreachable servers had to be manually removed from the cluster in order to
restore availability. RethinkDB 2.1 can resolve many cases of availability loss
automatically, and keeps the cluster in an administrable state even while servers are
missing.

There are three important scenarios in RethinkDB 2.1 when it comes to restoring the
availability of a given table after a server failure:

  • The table has three or more replicas, and a majority of the servers that are hosting
    these replicas are connected. RethinkDB 2.1 automatically elects new primary replicas
    to replace unavailable servers and restore availability. No manual intervention is
    required, and data consistency is maintained.
  • A majority of the servers for the table are connected, regardless of the number of
    replicas. The table can be manually reconfigured using the usual commands, and data
    consistency is always maintained.
  • A majority of servers for the table are unavailable. The new emergency_repair option
    to table.reconfigure can be used to restore table availability in this case.

System table changes

To reflect changes in the underlying cluster administration logic, some of the tables in
the rethinkdb database changed.

Changes to table_config:

  • Each shard subdocument now has a new field nonvoting_replicas, that can be set to a
    subset of the servers in the replicas field.
  • write_acks must now be either "single" or "majority". Custom write ack
    specifications are no longer supported. Instead, non-voting replicas can be used to set
    up replicas that do not count towards the write ack requirements.
  • Tables that have all of their replicas disconnected are now listed as special documents
    with an "error" field.
  • Servers that are disconnected from the cluster are no longer included in the table.

Changes to table_status:

  • The primary_replica field is now called primary_replicas and has an array of
    current primary replicas as its value. While under normal circumstances only a single
    server will be serving as the primary replica for a given shard, there can temporarily
    be multiple primary replicas during handover or while data is being transferred between
    servers.
  • The possible values of the state field now are "ready", "transitioning",
    "backfilling", "disconnected", "waiting_for_primary" and "waiting_for_quorum".
  • Servers that are disconnected from the cluster are no longer included in the table.

Changes to current_issues:

  • The issue types "table_needs_primary", "data_lost", "write_acks",
    "server_ghost" and "server_disconnected" can no longer occur.
  • A new issue type "table_availability" was added and appears whenever a table is
    missing at least one server. Note that no issue is generated if a server which is not
    hosting any replicas disconnects.

Other API-breaking changes

  • .split('') now treats the input as UTF-8 instead of an array of bytes
  • null values in compound index are no longer discarded
  • The new read_mode="outdated" optional argument replaces use_outdated=True

New features

  • Server
    • Added automatic failover and semi-lossless rebalance based on Raft (#223)
    • Backfills are now interuptible and reversible (#3886, #3885)
    • table.reconfigure now works even if some servers are disconnected (#3913)
    • Replicas can now be marked as voting or non-voting (#3891)
    • Added an emergency repair feature to restore table availability if consensus is lost
      (#3893)
    • Reads can now be made against a majority of replicas (#3895)
    • Added an emergency read mode that extracts data directly from a given replica for data
      recovery purposes (#4388)
    • Servers with no responsibilities can now be removed from clusters without raising an
      issue (#1790)
  • ReQL
    • Added ceil, floor and round (#866)
  • All drivers
    • Added driver-side support for SSL connections and CA verification (#4075, #4076,
      #4080)
  • Python driver
    • Added asyncio support (#4071)
    • rethinkdb export now supports the --delimiter option for CSV files (#3916)

Improvements

  • Server
    • Improved the handling of cluster membership and removal of servers (#3262, #3897,
      #1790)
    • Changed the formatting of the table_status system table (#3882, #4196)
    • Added an indexes field to the table_config system table (#4525)
    • Improved efficiency by making datum_t movable (#4056)
    • ReQL backtraces are now faster and smaller (#2900)
    • Replaced cJSON with rapidjson (#3844)
    • Failed meta operations are now transparently retried (#4199)
    • Added more detailed logging of cluster events (#3878)
    • Improved unsaved data limit throttling (#4441)
  • ReQL
    • .split('') is now UTF-8 aware (#2518)
    • Improved the behaviour of compound index values containing null (#4146)
    • Errors now distinguish failed writes from indeterminate writes (#4296)
    • r.union is now a top-level term (#4030)
    • condition.branch(...) now works just like r.branch(condition, ...) (#4438)
  • Web UI
    • Added new dependency and namespace management system to the web UI (#3465, #3660)
    • Improved the information visible on the dashboard (#4461)
    • Improved layout of server and replica assignment lists (#4372)
    • Updated to reflect the new clustering features and changes (#4283, #4330, #4288, ...)
  • JavaScript driver
    • The version of bluebird was updated to 2.9.32 (#4178, #4475)
  • Python driver
    • Added an r.__version__ property (#3100)

Bug fixes

  • time_of_date and date now respect timezones (#4149)
  • Added code to work around a bug in some versions of GLIBC and EGLIBC (#4470)
  • Python driver
    • Fixed a missing argument error (#4402)
  • JavaScript driver
    • Made the handling of the db optional argument to run consistent with the Ruby and
      Python drivers (#4347)

Contributors

Many thanks to external contributors from the RethinkDB community for helping
us ship RethinkDB 2.1. In no particular order:

Assets 2