[rudder-announce] [Release] Rudder 5.0.0 is out!

Thu Oct 11 11:54:09 UTC 2018

Dear Rudder community,

We are very proud to announce that we have just released a new version: 
Rudder 5.0.0.

First of all, a small word about what guided us during the development 
of this version:

The initial Rudder model consisting of a single software block which 
includes all features, thus imposing a greater and greater complexity on 
all of our users, has reached its limits. We have now reached a 
sufficient understanding of the domain, its challenges, and the way 
Rudder is used, to make us realize that this all-in-one model is not, or 
is no longer, the best suited.

That's why our main focus on this version was to create a plugin 
ecosystem for Rudder.

We'll go into details in the following section of this mail with a list 
of the main changes Rudder 5.0 brings to you:

/New plugin ecosystem/: Version 5.0 introduces a plugin ecosystem that 
gathers Rudder’s most specific features. This way, only essential 
features have to be installed by default and advanced features can be 
used on a case by case basis. So what is essential and what is not? The 
basic rule is that the essential experience must contain the features 
used by 80% or more of users, whatever the scale of use. In other words, 
we keep as core features everything that delivers on Rudder’s initial 
promise: enabling users to continuously audit and enforce configurations 
with an easy to use webapp providing visual reporting. The remaining 20% 
solve needs that are no less important, only less common (PDF compliance 
reports, UI branding, scale-out relay servers, validation workflow…). To 
know everything about the impact of this evolution, you can read the 
detailed dedicated article:

http://www.normation.com/en/blog/2018/09/26/rudder-5-new-modular-version-thanks-ecosystem-plugins/

/Integration/: We provide integration with third party tools as plugins, 
making Rudder more integrated with tools like Ansible, Centreon, Zabbix, 
GLPI or Vault. Except for a few (ie. managing AIX and Windows host), 
plugins are open source and source code is available here: 
https://github.com/normation/rudder-plugins/

/New documentation/: Welcome to our brand new documentation website 
docs.rudder.io <https://docs.rudder.io>! Beyond its fresh look (both on 
the online website and in the embedded version), this new documentation 
includes updated content and new resources, like a “getting started” 
guide and examples of use-cases.

/System API/: We built a new REST API that allows to manage some 
advanced settings and perform maintenance operations in Rudder, like 
triggering policy generations, updating dynamic groups and managing 
report archives. This was previously available in the now deprecated V1 
API (https://docs.rudder.io/history/4.3/rest-api.html#rest-api) which 
will be removed in the next major version (5.1).

/Debugging information script/: We created a script to gather basic 
information about a Rudder setup when you want to debug or understand 
Rudder’s behavior. This script fetches log files and executes various 
commands, either to get information from databases or directly from the 
system (package versions, etc)

/Automatic Technique upgrade/: Techniques provided with Rudder can now 
be automatically upgraded when you update Rudder. This process used to 
be manual because you might have modified the base Technique Library and 
we thought you may want to have more control about the content of your 
Technique Library. But it appears that this process was forgotten by a 
majority of our users and so many bug fixes and new versions were not 
available after an upgrade. By default this feature is enabled on new 
Rudder 5.0 installations but is disabled on upgrades from older 
versions, to prevent any accidental damage.

/Support policy/: Our general policy is to maintain major releases until 
3 months after the next major version is released to give some time for 
upgrading. The ESR tag was previously given to major releases that were 
maintained 6 months after the next ESR version was announced. Rudder 4.1 
is the last ESR release. For a slower major upgrade pace, Rudder 
subscription provides long-term maintenance up to 24 months after 
release (depending on the subscription level) for Rudder versions. Read 
the FAQ page for more information: 
http://faq.rudder-project.org/forums/2-knowledge-base/topics/9-when-are-versions-published-and-how-long-are-they-maintained/

/Packaging/: /Relay server support is now part of an open-source 
plugin/, pre-compiled packages are available as part of the Rudder 
subscription.

The agent package is now more modular: instead of embedding all 
dependencies, we are using system libraries on maintained operating 
systems, to allow for a better system integration. As a consequence, the 
experimental rudder-agent-thin (which had this exact goal) package is 
not built anymore.

/New repositories/: https://repository.rudder.io/ We are using new 
repositories for versions starting from 5.0. We also provide all 
previous releases in these new repos. We improved our build system, 
files hierarchy, and added more gpg signatures on distributed files 
(Rudder sources, etc.)

*Warning*: A last note before upgrading (I know you already typed the 
command, but read that please) , the following features are now provided 
as plugins and no more available as part of default Rudder installation 
starting from 5.0:

  * LDAP-based authentication
  * Relay servers
  * Changes validation workflow (change requests)

If you were using them, upgrade will disable them and you will have to 
install the plugin. Read (the plugins page on our 
website)[http://rudder.io/plugins] for more information.

The ChangeLog is available here: http://www.rudder-project.org/changelog-5.0

This version of Rudder is a final release. We have tested it thoroughly 
and believe it to be free of any major bugs. This version is now the 
latest version of Rudder.

As always, check out 
https://www.rudder-project.org/site/get-rudder/downloads/ for download 
links.

We look forward to your feedback, be it comments on this list, questions 
on Twitter (@RudderProject <https://twitter.com/RudderProject>) or on 
IRC (#rudder <http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=rudder> on Freenode) 
, bug reports or feature requests (and of course GitHub pull requests ;) ).

Wishing you a pleasant day
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Logo Normation Vincent Membré*
/Developer / Release manager/
Normation <http://www.normation.com>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*87, Rue de Turbigo, 75003 Paris, France*
Phone: 	+33 (0)1 84 16 06 00
Mobile: 	+33 (0)6 10 14 76 78
------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.rudder-project.org/pipermail/rudder-announce/attachments/20181011/de80e842/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: dhhnmcpfbcdnpemh.png
Type: image/png
Size: 23693 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.rudder-project.org/pipermail/rudder-announce/attachments/20181011/de80e842/attachment-0001.png>