dCache 11.2 Release Notes

Highlights

NFS read performance improvement
Kafka logging for billing
Introduce hot file replication mechanism on pools, where the pool itself tiggers replication of hot (popular) files

Incompatibilities

Xrootd PrepareRequest will return Unsupported.

Release 11.2.0

Billing

Starting with version 11.2.0 dCache adds transferTag information to the generated JSON records. The transferTag is used by clients to label transfers with activity-specific information, such as experiment ID and workflow ID. This information is currently provided by XRootD and HTTP clients, and can be used by monitoring systems to identify data flows.

A Kafka producer operates asynchronously by default: when an application calls send(), the record is placed into an internal buffer and the call typically returns immediately, without waiting for broker acknowledgements.

However, asynchronous operation does not guarantee fully non-blocking behavior. Under certain conditions—such as broker unavailability, missing topic metadata, or exhausted producer buffers—the producer may block or fail synchronously. These edge cases are a common source of confusion and can lead to unexpected application failures.

In dCache, this behavior poses a risk when Kafka is unavailable, as transfer events may not be marked as successful if Kafka reporting fails, potentially causing service instability or crashes. To mitigate this risk, the Kafka logging has been relocated to the non-blocking Billing service and disabled in other dCache components that may block on Kafka availability. As a result, Kafka cluster outages no longer impact the stability of dCache processes.

To enable kafka for billing service the folowing property in billing.properties should be enabled (one-of?true|false|${dcache.billing.enable.kafka})billing.enable.kafka.

NFS

The NFS door has been updated to use the original NFS request credentials when Proxy-IO is used.

Pool

The NFS mover has been updated to use zero-copy to reduce memory copies when data is sent to a client during READ. This gives up to a 20% increase in data throughput for data-intensive applications.

Introduce hot file replication mechanism on pools, where the pool itself tiggers replication of hot (popular) files. When the number of in-flight transfers for a file reaches certain configurable threshold, the pool invokes the migration module to create a pre-defined configurable number of replicas on other pools in the same pool group. Added hot file replication feature to automatically detect and replicate heavily-requested files to other available pools in the same group. Added hotfile commands to the pool admin interface to enable customization of parameters affecting hot file replication. New boolean configuration file property pool.hotfile.monitoring.enable (set true to enable hot file replication).

Xrootd

The Xrootd protocol provides a mechanism to trigger file stage via prepare request. Up to version 11.2.0 dCache responded with OK to Xrootd prepare request which, depending on the client application logic, may enable subsequent open calls on files that are not availble in cache, potentially leading to blocking the client application due to large tape access latencies and cause inefficient access to tape resource. This behavior is now changed, so that the prepare request will fail with the error Unsupported. Users who need staging should use the TAPE-REST-API.

Changelog from 11.1.0 to 11.2.0

f6e47327ab: [maven-release-plugin] prepare branch @{releaseLabel}
b21c65af3e: bulk: catch another place generating verbose logging
a9f5e776f1: pool: implememt hot file replication
924ef9354d: code coverage: bump JaCoCo version to 0.8.14
9a010bf35a: Update JsonWebToken unit tests for ECDSA signatures
47bcf81c03: packages: fix gplazma2-python plugin version
10396b94c0: ci: enable kafka in billing
ad03a7caaf: Revert “fix broken test due to kafka move to billing”; fix the failing test
7e028b08d9: libs: update maven-compiler-plugin version to 3.10.1
fd98eb1850: fix broken test due to kafka move to billing
4be74060f8: billing: migrate Kafka logging to Billing service
01ace93a31: frontend: validate JSON in migration request
766f7b36bd: pom: bump jackson to 2.18.5
31eff98dfb: pom: bump netty version to 4.2.9
e8d25383b7: ci: escape strings in frontend test environment
466b32883f: bulk: avoid spamming log file when requests have already been cleared due to auto-clear flag
7a5b413ef4: nfs: update show pools command to display pure IPs
f77a00aea8: Minor AI-suggested improvements to Maven config
fb5f925357: Revert “Minor AI-suggested improvements to Maven config”
07532e159e: Minor AI-suggested improvements to Maven config
6256b08b95: Prevent unwanted spinning on migration jobs
3d91759804: billing: add transfer tag to moverInfo json
297a7ba0b6: gplazma: update explain login to allow credentials
a9871213ba: common: increase robustness of access log file
9f0a67d72e: build(deps): bump io.netty:netty-codec-http
e800889414: docs: replace dCache components diagram
c7cbf8eede: webdav: fix range header formatting in relay request
4ba5e32039: pool: use zero-copy FileChunk to perform NFS reads
4191e1c0cc: libs: update swagger-jersey2 version to 1.6.14
99ada5032a: libs: update swagger version to 5.30.2
a0c481b062: frontend: Fix issue 7968
1719c0b59e: Address PR #7785 review comments: fix DER encoding for ECDSA signatures and add unit tests
fe7be7478c: ci: add dcache db migration test
14a743ef4f: srm,spacemanager: fix liquibase migration checksum mismatch
873ce0cc68: fix the propert va;ue for frontend limits error max-allowed
8de5c6f185: common-security: add workaround bouncycastle EC algorithm name mismatch
ec0c009b32: frontend: add code flow auth to dcache-view
912691890e: gplazma: fix banfile plugin
426a95039d: webdav: return 403 on unauthorized attempt to rename resource
c483a3ce65: pool: use SSLTrustManagerWithHostnameChecking to initialize CAnL
430b1cec17: ci: stop using voms server
defc79cd40: libs: update jersey version to 2.47
76fbde2575: nfs: use user credentials to perform proxy-I/O
549237caf6: pool: add command line to check the correctness of online replica having sticky bit
6c1074f5c4: transfermanagers: complete removal of DB support
88ac1d0cea: Reapply “libs: update jackson to version 2.18.3”
48d3b549ff: gplazma: ldap make search base DNs more flexible
48df33385f: ci: use java21 build images
3560e86630: qos: frontend tests for qos transition
d5d76b4a2b: pool: merge MoverFactory interface into TransferService
831145ae2c: pool: fix mover’s local endpoint reported by a mover
fc3faf12ef: qos: frontend tests for qos transition
7819d3a980: book: document ‘role’ configuration option of omnisession plugin
e7d2304abf: src: use Java17 HexFormat instead of guava alternative
a501b3da33: xroot: don’t reply with OK on PrepareRequest
96a88e6efe: ci: add qos policy endpoint tests to the gitlab pipeline
6ca0a2ed58: common: remove unused constructor
dcdf855975: ci: fix path to custom helm config
6f3b040aa7: ci: customize helm for CI
e2f575e2af: build(deps): bump org.bouncycastle:bcpkix-jdk18on from 1.78.1 to 1.79
c4139c7e7f: ci: update assertion message for all frontend tests
635c15cbd5: dcache: enforce rate limiting only for authentication errors
2c5e92cbc8: docs: fix references to old ‘cleaner’ service
f3aab0de2b: pool: log at warn when files state in pool change
dd5ae2d7d8: utils: update ExceptionsTests to correctly handle java 19+
341c77e65f: pnfsmanager: don’t use guava’s ListenableFuture to notify flush listeners
7b348be0df: pom: update test dependencies
cb8cb0924e: ci: rewriting qos-policy endpoint tests
c49820e441: gplazma: enforce RolePrincipal if Role attribute is set
fe4d1896ed: nfs: lower nfs-client workaround message
2e630594af: ci: use chainguard-dev version of kaniko
d68c5cfd40: test: drop snicked system.out.print
cd23f595bd: poolmanager: fix wrandom partition
a25afab99e: build: fix missing resources caused by specification of resources
eef720e567: dcache: fix use of vulnerable deserialization methods in test
8e7c5b63eb: frontend: introduce request rate limter to frontend
fbeba80b26: build: remove vestigial SMC configuration from pom.xml files
5d54e52624: build: Update SMC library and corresponding maven plugin
39c7320a0b: build : fix hysteresis with system-test
c74e8e4d39: build: Update surefire and configure to redirect test output
b2344ec153: pool: extract comparator creation to function in IoQueueManager
8a75cc1749: Revert “Minor typo in comment”
1bd3809d12: Revert “IDE-suggested drive-by: extract comparator creation”
c25a037df2: IDE-suggested drive-by: extract comparator creation
4b6410b438: Minor typo in comment
3f6d72a1f4: jetty: introduce request rate limiter
f8ff33abbf: omnisessio: accept tabs in config file
c08a1bdfa7: BUILDING.md: update how start the container
4030e00e8d: [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration
4b771ef3f9: Update JsonWebToken.java
5155d12c7d: Update JsonWebToken.java
6e5c91b36e: Update JsonWebToken.java
02e99fc200: Update JsonWebToken.java
2d22189329: Update JsonWebToken.java
0992f8bda5: add support for EC Public Keys

What's new in dCache 11.2 Release notes