NATS 2.2

    JetStream is the next generation streaming platform for NATS, highly resilient, highly available, and easy to use. We’ve spent a long time listening to our community, learning from our experiences, looking at the needs of today, and thinking deeply about the needs of tomorrow. We built JetStream to address these needs.

    JetStream:

    • is easy to deploy and manage, built into the NATS server
    • simplifies and accelerates development
    • supports at least once delivery and exactly once within a window
    • is horizontally scalable at runtime with no interruptions
    • persists data via streams and delivers or replays via consumers
    • supports multiple patterns to consume data on the same stream
    • supports push and pull modes when consuming messages
    • is account aware
    • allows for detailed granularity of security, by stream, by consumer, by function

    Get started with JetStream.

    Account management just became much easier. This version of NATS has a built-in account management system, eliminating the need to set up an account manager when not using the memory account resolver. With automated default system account generation, and the ability to preload accounts, simply enable a set of servers in your deployment to be account resolvers or account resolver caches, and they will handle public account information provided to the NATS system through the NATS nsc tooling. Have enterprise-scale account management up and running in minutes.

    Time-Based Account Restrictions

    Scoped to the user, you can now specify a specific block of time during the day when applications can connect. For example, permit certain users or applications to access the system during specified business hours, or protect business operations during the busiest parts of the day from batch driven back-office applications that could adversely impact the system when run at the wrong time.

    Now you can specify within an account. This significantly reduces efforts around policy, reduces chances for error in permissioning, and simplifies the provisioning of user credentials.

    Connect mobile and web applications to any NATS server using WebSockets. Built to more easily traverse firewalls and load balancers, NATS WebSocket support provides even more flexibility to NATS deployments and makes it easier to communicate to the edge and endpoints. This is currently supported in NATS server leaf nodes, nats.ts, nats.deno, and the nats.js clients.

    With the and the ease with which NATS can extend a cloud deployment to the edge, it makes perfect sense to leverage existing investments in IoT deployments. It’s expensive to update devices and large edge deployments. Our goal is to enable the hyperconnected world, so we added first-class support for MQTT 3.1.1 directly into the NATS Server.

    We’ve added a variety of features to allow you to build a more resilient, secure, and simply better system at scale.

    Message Headers

    We’ve added the ability to optionally use headers, following the HTTP semantics familiar to developers. Headers naturally apply overhead, which was why we resisted adding them for so long. By creating new internal protocol messages transparent to developers, we maintain the extremely fast processing of simple NATS messages that we have always had while supporting headers for those who would like to leverage them. Adding headers to messages allows you to provide application-specific metadata, such as compression or encryption-related information, without touching the payload. We also provide some NATS specific headers for use in JetStream and other features.

    When taking down a server for maintenance, servers can be signaled to enter Lame Duck Mode where they do not accept new connections and evict existing connections over a period of time. Maintainer supported clients will notify applications that a server has entered this state and will be shutting down, allowing a client to smoothly transition to another server or cluster and better maintain business continuity during scheduled maintenance periods.

    React Quicker with No-Responder Notifications

    Why wait for timeouts when services aren’t available? When a request is made to a service (request/reply) and the NATS Server knows there are no services available the server will short circuit the request. A “no-responders” protocol message will be sent back to the requesting client which will break from blocking API calls. This allows applications to immediately react which further enables building a highly responsive system at scale, even in the face of application failures and network partitions.

    Account Monitoring - More Meaningful Metrics

    NATS now allows for to identify usage metrics tied to a particular account. Inspect messages and bytes sent or received and various connection statistics for a particular account. Accounts can represent anything - a group of applications, a team or organization, a geographic location, or even roles. If NATS is enabling your SaaS solution you could use NATS account scoped metrics to bill users.