github rethinkdb/rethinkdb v2.1.0-1
2.1.0 — Forbidden Planet
on GitHub

latest releases: v2.4.4, v2.4.3, v2.4.2...
8 years ago

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.

Compatibility

Data files from RethinkDB versions 1.14.0 onward will be automatically migrated.
As with any major release, back up your data files before performing the upgrade.

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

Note that files from the RethinkDB 2.1.0 beta release are not compatible with this
version.

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.
  • The new indexes field lists the secondary indexes on the given 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.

Changes to cluster_config:

  • A new document with the id "heartbeat" allows configuring the heartbeat timeout for
    intracluster connections.

New ReQL error types

RethinkDB 2.1 introduces new error types that allow you to handle different error classes
separately in your application if you need to. You can find the
complete list of new error types in the documentation.

As part of this change, ReQL error types now use the Reql name prefix instead of Rql
(for example ReqlRuntimeError instead of RqlRuntimeError).
The old type names are still supported in our drivers for backwards compatibility.

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

Deprecated functionality

The older protocol-buffer-based client protocol is deprecated in this release. RethinkDB
2.2 will no longer support clients that still use it. All "current" drivers listed on
the drivers page use the new JSON-based protocol and will continue to work
with RethinkDB 2.2.

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)
    • Made the intracluster heartbeat timeout configurable (#4449)
  • ReQL
    • Added ceil, floor and round (#866)
    • Extended the ReQL error type hierarchy to be more fine-grained (#4544)
  • All drivers
    • Added driver-side support for SSL connections and CA verification (#4075, #4076,
      #4080)
  • Python driver
    • Added Python 3 asyncio support (#4071)
    • Added Twisted support (#4096)
    • 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 to increase write performance (#4441)
    • Improved the performance of the is_empty term (#4592)
    • Small backfills are now prioritized to make tables available more quickly after a
      server restart (#4383)
    • Reduced the memory requirements when backfilling large documents (#4474)
    • Changefeeds using the squash option now send batches early if the changefeed queue
      gets too full (#3942)
  • 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)
    • Improved the detection of non-atomic update and replace arguments (#4582)
  • 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)
    • Improved compatibility with Internet Explorer 10 (#4534)
    • TCP keepalive is now enabled for all connections (#4572)
  • Python driver
    • Added a new --max-document-size option to the rethinkdb import script to handle
      very large JSON documents (#4452)
    • Added an r.__version__ property (#3100)
    • TCP keepalive is now enabled for all connections (#4572)
  • Ruby driver
    • TCP keepalive is now enabled for all connections (#4572)

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)
  • Updated the OS X uninstall script to avoid spurious error messages (#3773)
  • Fixed a starvation issue with squashing changefeeds (#3903)
  • has_fields now returns a selection when called on a table (#2609)
  • Fixed a bug that caused intermittent server crashes with the message
    Guarantee failed: [fn_id != __null] in combination with the r.js command (#4611)
  • Web UI
    • Fixed an issue in the table list that caused it to get stuck showing
      "Loading tables..." if no database existed (#4464)
    • Fixed the tick marks in the shard distribution graph (#4294)
  • 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)
    • Fixed a problem that could cause connections to not be closed correctly (#4526)
  • Ruby driver
    • Made the EventMachine API raise an error when a connection is closed while handlers
      are active (#4626)

Contributors

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

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