AppScale 2.9 is out!

[Meni Vaitsi]

Hi All,

Today we're happy to announce the release of AppScale 2.9!

AppScale 2.9 is the last version of the series and a bridge for great improvements that will be coming later this summer. Here’s what’s new:

• Zookeeper is now the main deployment layout store. All AppScale servers can find out their place in the cluster from Zookeeper. This is a big step towards dynamic configuration changes at runtime, as well as tolerance to server failure.

• We improved application fault tolerance. By modifying the algorithm for application instance placement in available App Servers, AppScale now has more balanced resource usage and significantly smaller reaction time to server failures.

• Version 2.9 comes with a new tool, appscale upgrade! Moving forward, this new AppScale tool will facilitate upgrades of large and small deployments, while reducing complexity and time spent.
  

We're also excited about the upcoming AppScale 3.0! We're working on big datastore layout changes to increase performance and improve disk usage, as well as a couple new very cool features. So, stay tuned for updates!

Full list of AppScale 2.9 highlights/bug fixes below:

AppScale

• Added an upgrade mechanism to make future platform upgrades easier
  
• Gave ZooKeeper more responsibility for keeping track of configuration state
  
• Fixed the "Delete App" functionality in the dashboard
  
• Fixed a bug that regenerated nginx files needlessly
  
• Adjusted the placement logic of new AppServers to improve fault tolerance
  
• Improved AppController stability
  
• Fixed certificate verification in some cases when a server uses SNI
  
• Included more AppServer information in the output of 'appscale status'
  
• Provided a more useful error message for invalid node layouts
  
• Moved the Cassandra installation directory outside of the Git repository
  
• Added logging to the UAServer
  

AppScale Tools

• Installed libraries in appscale.tools namespace
  
• Added an upgrade tool command to make future platform upgrades easier
  
• Generate a crash log without trying to get the locale
  
• No confirmation for removal of app when test is set to true in AppScalefile
  

Give AppScale 2.9 a try and feel free to reach out to us here or on IRC (#appscale on freenode) with any issues or questions.

Thanks

-Meni