Major Releases

The new Event Transformation feature allows users to perform specific event transformations like updates and deletes in the event store, utilizing the Event Transformation API.This functional change is intended to facilitate more flexible event management in rare instances where modifications are unavoidable.

In the application view, users are now provided with an option to force the client to reconnect. This addition aims to offer a practical tool for addressing client connectivity issues.

It is now possible to remove a node from the cluster through the user interface (UI). This functionality, previously accessible only via the command-line interface (CLI) and REST API, has been expanded to the UI for broader accessibility.

In this release, we have temporarily disabled the 'Development Mode/Event Purge' feature. Users should now utilize the 'Delete/Create Context' operation as an alternative. This change will remain in place until a more efficient solution is implemented.

In an effort to optimize performance, we have updated Axon Server’s approach to memory management for file resources. Prior to this release, Axon Server primarily depended on the Java garbage collector to reclaim memory used by memory-mapped files. With this update, memory management is now undertaken directly by Axon Server, enhancing efficiency in file resource usage.

The Axon Server artifact has been updated to simplify the deployment process. Instead of separate artifacts for the Axon Server Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition, we are releasing a single artifact from now on. The Axon Server features will adjust automatically based on the presence of a provided license. Note that the Axon Server Standard Edition remains open-source, but separate releases will no longer be made.

The axoniq/axonserver-enterprise docker image is no longer updated. To use the latest version, use the axoniq/axonserver image with tags ending with -dev. For instance, if you use axoniq/axonserver-enterprise:2023.0.1-dev, you can switch to axoniq/axonserver:2023.1.0-dev.

If you are used to Axon Server Standard Edition, note that there is a difference in the server’s initialization. As the server can now run standalone or as a node in a cluster, you have to tell it how it should initialize itself. The dashboard provides an initial page to do this initialization. To automatically initialize the server as a standalone server, add the following properties:

Tiered Storage is a highly anticipated feature of the Axon Server Enterprise’s 2023.0.0 release, allowing each node to store its data across different storage locations. With its ability to optimize performance and reduce storage costs, Tiered Storage is a powerful tool for businesses seeking to improve their storage management strategies. By distributing data across different levels of storage media based on access speed and cost, Tiered Storage enables organizations to minimize the cost of storing infrequently accessed data while ensuring fast access to frequently accessed data.

The Tiered Storage feature is especially powerful in combination with the use of secondary nodes, a feature that has been around since Axon Server Enterprise version 4.4:

Tiered Storage enables the configuration and maintenance of a variable number of storage tiers for each node, depending on its role, such as primary, secondary, or backup nodes.

Secondary nodes enable you to reduce the number of copies of data that are stored by keeping only the most recent events stored on your primary nodes and keeping the full event store on the secondary nodes. The configuration of Tiered Storage on these secondary nodes can focus on lower storage costs and large volumes of data, while Primary nodes focus on speed of access.

With its advanced capabilities, Tiered Storage is poised to become a critical asset for enterprises seeking to streamline their data storage and management processes.

Ephemeral contexts are a new type of context that store events for a limited time before automatically removing them permanently. These contexts are particularly useful in scenarios such as time-limited audit systems or integration contexts, where events are broadcasted to multiple observers in real-time, after which they are no more of use.

As events might become outdated and irrelevant over time, ephemeral contexts can help to manage storage space and maintain system efficiency by automatically deleting these events after a specified time period. By using ephemeral contexts, organizations can efficiently store only necessary data and reduce clutter in their systems.