GemFire Version 9.15 conserve-sockets default has changed

Products

• VMware Tanzu Gemfire

Issue/Introduction

With version 9.15 now available, it is important to share some details regarding the conserve-sockets default setting changed from true to false.

If you are explicitly setting conserve-sockets, then you will not be affected by this specific change.    However, if you have never set the conserve-sockets explicitly, you have been operating with conserve-sockets=true behavior.

Now, with GemFire 9.15 and going forward, all versions will use conseve-sockets=false default behavior.

Environment

Product Version: 9.15
OS: ALL

Resolution

If you are happy with your current behavior, using the default, you should probably add an explicit setting of conserve-sockets=true to the gemfire.properties file.

Also, if you see negatively impacting behavior after upgrading to 9.15, such as not being sufficiently provisioned for heap, FD's, threads, etc, perhaps it is due to the fact that you are using the default behavior.

The default behavior with 9.15 is very different than the default behavior on all prior versions.      While we do generally recommend conserve-sockets=false, the new default setting, it is also imperative that you test and determine whether you are seeing any signs of having insufficient resources.

If you upgrade to 9.15 and start having issues, please consider this as one possibility. With all upgrades, whether GemFire, OS, JDK, Applications, we recommend doing sufficient testings, stress testing, to determine whether anything has changed, such as higher heap footprint consumption, higher CPU consumption, etc.