New Release! Tungsten Version 7.0 Now Available

We are pleased to announce that Tungsten Clustering and Tungsten Replicator Versions 7.0 are now available!

This major new release includes the fully REST-compliant, publicly-available Tungsten API v2.0, enhanced security, monitoring, performance, management, new commands, a new and improved Dashboard, and a new Dynamic Active/Active (DAA) topology. Tungsten v7.0 is the culmination of years of planning and work, and it lays the foundation for even more significant developments!

Below are relevant links, as well as details about upgrading and highlights.

Read the Release Notes:

• Tungsten Clustering v7.0 Release Notes
• Tungsten Replicator v7.0 Release Notes

View the Documentation:

• Doc Page - Upgrading to v7.0
• Continuent Docs Home
• New RESTful API Docs
• Dashboard 1.0.10 Docs

If you are a Continuent customer, please reach out to Continuent Support to schedule your v7.0 upgrade planning session! With Tungsten v7.0 comes heightened security settings by default; this means there are a few decisions to make when performing the upgrade. We would like to make ourselves available to participate in your upgrade planning process.

Download Tungsten v7.0

Upgrading - Critical Information

Please review the v7+ upgrade procedures given the new Security default in the docs.

Two new tpm options have been included as part of the new API in this release. The options are used for setting the APIv2 admin user credentials. If these exist in your config before the upgrade, the tpm command will automatically create the admin users for Connector, Manager and Replicator for the APIv2 authentication feature. This is VERY handy, and will save you manually setting up APIv2 authentication for all three at a later date. The new options are as follows:

• rest-api-admin-user
• rest-api-admin-pass

tungsten_set_position has been deprecated and no longer available in this release. dsctl should be used instead. (CT-1302)

tungsten_provision_slave has now been renamed to tprovision (CT-1436)

The --user and --password options have been added to the following scripts:

• cluster_backup
• check_tungsten_backups
• tungsten_monitor

Added support for mariabackup. Two new values for tpm option backup-method (CT-1100):

• backup-method=mariabackup
• backup-method=mariabackup-incremental

Tungsten v7.0 Highlights

New Tungsten API

• The new API v2.0 is fully-REST compliant and publicly-available.
• It enables better performance and lower overhead, as well as enhanced monitoring and management.
• You may access the API via a new CLI tool called tapi, by which the majority of Tungsten CLI tools may be accessed as well.
• The Nagios and Zabbix checks are also available via API v2.0 using the tapi tool (CT-1454).
• API v2 lays the foundation for both Kubernetes development and Tungsten Cloud.
  • Learn more about the new RESTful API in this blog or the API Documentation.

Security Enhancements

Including:

• SSL within all cluster layers enabled by default for new installs
• Support for TLSv1.3 added
• On-disk THL Encryption is now available

Enhanced Monitoring

• A number of new metrics have been added to the Prometheus exporters - full metrics for Connector, Manager and Replicator now available (CT-1266, CT-1615)
• Prometheus exporters mysqld_exporter and node_exporter are now included with the distribution packages.
• A new command line tool tmonitor is now available for the management and testing of external Prometheus exporters (node and mysqld), and for the testing of internal exporters (Manager, Connector and Replicator). (CT-960)
• The Nagios and Zabbix checks are faster and available via API v2.0 using the `tapi` tool.
• Audit Logging now available within the Connector (CT-78). For more information, visit this page.
• The tungsten_find_orphaned script now creates a log file every time it runs which is stored in the configured temporary directory (/tmp/ by default, tpm query values temp_directory). This is to allow for easier troubleshooting and visibility during automatic execution. (CT-1447)
• A new log file, console.log is now generated in the $CONTINUENT_ROOT/tungsten/tungsten-manager/logs directory which contains all output displayed via cctrl. This file will provide Continuent Support with more valuable information when assisting to diagnose support cases. (CT-1499)

Performance Improvements

Such as:

• It is now possible to compress and/or encrypt THL on disk. (CT-630)
  For more information on using these features see this page.
• In-Flight THL Compression is now available. (CT-1420)
• Drizzle driver improvements.
• A new Replicator feature that decreases the time that would be needed to extract a new event after STOP_EVENT. (CT-1349)

Improved Management

• Access to a whole new suite of tools, as well as most of the Tungsten CLI commands, via the ‘tapi’ tool.
• Improved Backup/Restore and Reprovision support, including support for `mariabackup`.
• the `tpm diag` command has been polished in many areas.
• `tungsten_provision_slave` was improved and renamed to `tprovision`
• The new command tungsten_merge_logs eases troubleshooting. (CT-1667)
  • You may read more about this new command in the blog or the doc page.
• The tpm diag command now uses tar czf instead of the zip command to compress the gathered files. The zip command is no longer a prerequisite for tpm diag. (CT-1253)
• The cctrl.log file is now accessible from the $CONTINUENT_ROOT/service_logs directory. (CT-1727)
• A new tpm option delete-service is now available to simplify the removal of clusters and/or replicator services. (CT-210, CT-327, CT-1275)
• A new tpm option purge-thl and a new script tungsten_purge_thl have been added to allow easier and more intelligent THL purging across all nodes in a topology. The default behavior is to display the needed commands for the admin to execute manually. (CT-1273)
  This allows you to purge THL files based on specific rules - please read the docs for more info.
• A new sub-command has been added, tpm generate-haproxy-for-api. This read-only action will read all available INI files and dump out corresponding haproxy.cfg entries with properly incrementing ports; the composite parent will come first, followed by the composite children in alphabetical order. The tungsten_generate_haproxy_for_api script functionality has been merged into the tpm generate-haproxy-for-api command. The tungsten_generate_haproxy_for_api script remains as a shell wrapper for tpm generate-haproxy-for-api. (CT-1342)
• tungsten_send_diag now supports a new command-line argument, --cleanup, which will cause the removal of the diagnostic archive file generated using the --diag argument. (CT-1360)
• tpm diag now collects routing table information via route -n, and has two new command-line arguments: --include and --groups.
  • --include specifies a comma-separated list of subroutines to include. Any gather subroutine not listed will be skipped.
  • --groups specifies a comma-separated list of subroutine groups to include. Any group not listed will be skipped.
    (CT-1322)
• The tungsten_reset_manager command is now able to restart the Manager process when the --start or -s argument is passed in. (CT-1401)

All New Tungsten Dashboard v1.0.10

The new Dashboard version has significant performance improvements and many new features, including:

• Notes per node
• Audit log for update operations
• Front-end display of actual curl commands
• Integration and access to Prometheus-Grafana

New Topology: “Dynamic Active/Active,” aka “DAA”

• This new breed of mixed Active-Active / Active-Passive cluster allows for instant cross-site failover (CT-1540)
• Can be enabled by deploying Composite Active/Active (CAA) and changing a Connector setting, so it behaves like Composite Active/Passive based on a set of rules.
• Learn more about how DAA compares to CAA and CAP in this blog.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Tungsten v7.0

Q. Will Dashboard v1.0.9 work with Tungsten v7.0?
A. No, Dashboard v1.0.10 or better is required to work with Tungsten v7.0 via API v2.0. Dashboard v1.0.9 and below require API v1, which has been obsoleted in Tungsten v7.0.

• 4.1. Configure the Tungsten Cluster APIv2 for Dashboard
• 10.1. Test Connectivity to the Tungsten APIv2 via HAProxy

Q. Can I upgrade directly from v5.x to v7.0?
A. Yes, you may upgrade directly from v5.x to v7.0.

Q. How do I upgrade to v7.0 if I do not want full security enabled (as it is by default in v7.0)?
A. Visit this documentation page to learn how to upgrade to v7.0 given new security procedures.

Q. How do I upgrade APIv1 to APIv2?
A. When you upgrade to Tungsten v7.0, the API is automatically upgraded from APIv1 to the new, RESTful APIv2. You’ll just need to upgrade any scripts and Dashboard config files for the new security settings. At the end of this page, please see “4.4.7.8. Optional Post-Upgrade steps to configure API.” For Dashboard-specific API instructions, visit this page. To learn more about the RESTful APIv2, please visit the RESTful API docs.

Q. What new compatibilities come with Tungsten v7.0?
A. Tungsten v7.0 comes with several new compatibilities, including:

• IPv6 support (CT-1537)
• RedHat/CentOS 8 certification
• Rocky Linux support
• Java 17 LTS support (CT-1706)
• MariaDB 10.3+ is now fully supported

We are very proud of this new major release and are excited to bring it to our customers in the MySQL community!

If you are a customer, reach out to Continuent Support via Zendesk or by emailing to schedule and discuss your upgrade plan. If you’re not a Continuent customer and you’d like to learn more about how the new Tungsten v7.0 may help you, please feel free to reach out!