KrakenD CE v2.6 released with OpenTelemetry
by Albert Lombarte
We’re thrilled to share the latest KrakenD Community Edition v2.6 updates, focusing on enhancing observability, plugin development, and JWT validation. This release introduces significant improvements, new features, and an emphasis on OpenTelemetry integration.
Developers of plugins will find a new command to test plugins before you deploy them. While developing them, there is also access to more data, like the KrakenD context or the internal request, which allows for more imaginative plugins.
Introducing OpenTelemetry
KrakenD has traditionally offered its telemetry integration through OpenCensus or its native component, which have provided reliable service for over six years, and now we are adding the more modern and robust OpenTelemetry framework.
With the integration of OpenTelemetry (OTEL), KrakenD continues providing comprehensive, unified, and vendor-neutral observability. OpenTelemetry is a standard that allows KrakenD to integrate with numerous integrations without developing new exporters. It offers deeper insights into application performance than its OpenCensus predecessor, identifying bottlenecks, latency issues, and error diagnostics with enhanced precision.
Our OTLP Exporter allows you to push metrics to a local or remote collector, but it can also export a port for Prometheus data scrapping.
Our grafana dashboards have been revamped and supercharged with a lot more metrics! Here’s a video showing how it looks like (subtitles available):
For more information, read our blog post “From OpenCensus to OpenTelemetry”.
🚀 Summary of changes for CEv2.6
OpenTelemetry integration, extended plugin capabilities, updated Grafana Dashboard, and JWT fixes.
- Added the OpenTelemetry integration which will eventually replace the previous OpenCensus component.
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The new command
krakend test-plugintests if one or more given.sofiles are loadable into KrakenD as the selected plugin type. - New Grafana dashboard available for Prometheus via OpenTelemetry
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Backend logs like
[BACKEND: /foo]have mutated now to[BACKEND: GET /endpoint/{var} -> /foo]showing their relationship with the endpoint. - All plugins have now the KrakenD context, allowing you to perform operations during shutdown
- Request and response modifier plugins have now access to the HTTP context. Reponse modifiers have also access to the internal request, knowing low-level details like which backend was selected.
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The JWT Validator adds a new field
auth_header_nameto read tokens from custom headers (thanks to @rodion-goritskov) - The JWT validator can read now scopes in array format in addition to the space-separated list (thanks to @pirm-in)
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The JWT signer returns now the
typ(thanks to @AlyHKafoury) - The audit command includes new validations and security recommendations, and fixes a false positive on the sequential rule.
- Fixed hostname reporting on Logstash (thanks to @lxdraw)
- Fixed a bug that prevented having multiple backends using Async Agents
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Removed from schema previosuly deprecated fields
allow_insecure_connectionsin the root. Must be declared underclient_tls.allow_insecure_connectionsnow. -
Removed from schema previously deprecated
prefetch_sizeandprefetch_countattributes from AMQP. These attributes did not have any effect in the software. -
The telemetry exporters based in
telemetry/opencensus, although they are still available, won’t receive further updates and will be deprecated in the future. All efforts are focused on OpenTelemetry instead. -
The telemetry exporter
telemetry/influxis still available, but won’t receive further updates and will be deprecated in the future. All efforts are focused on OpenTelemetry instead.
Upgrading to the latest version is always advised.
This release marks a significant step forward for KrakenD, driven by community feedback and contributions. We’re grateful for the support and input from our users, which continue to shape KrakenD’s evolution.
As we look forward to what’s next, we encourage you to explore the new features and improvements in CE v2.6. Your feedback is invaluable to us as we strive to make KrakenD the best API Gateway for your needs.
Happy API management!
