If you are running Alfresco Content Services 5.2 or 6.2, now is a great time to consider upgrading to version 7.1. Not only can you take advantage of new features like support for the Elasticsearch platform and Direct Access URLs for Content Stores using AWS S3 storage, but the end of maintenance dates are rapidly approaching.
Important Alfresco Maintenance Dates
If you are utilizing ACS 5.2 or 6.2, you can see End of Maintenance dates are scheduled for February and November 2022. To ensure you are not running an outdated version, now is the perfect time to start planning the upgrade to a newer version of Alfresco.
If you are not concerned with the End of Maintenance dates, there are other reasons to look at upgrading your current version of Alfresco: New Features!!!
Alfresco 7.0 Features
Query Accelerator – This is a new solution to provide highly scalable directed searches for large content repositories.
Installation & Deployment – There are new installers and utilities for bare-metal and containers deployments.
Renditions Improvements – New capabilities to control and support large content repositories.
Security & Risk Management – Functionality to support PII marking, security marks, and privacy compliance.
Early access to Search 3.0 with Elasticsearch – Gain access to evaluate Elasticsearch for ACS as an alternative to SOLR.
Alfresco 7.1 Features
Support for Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0 with Elasticsearch – ACS now supports the Elasticsearch platform to search within the repository using Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0. Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0 uses Elasticsearch instead of SOLR for searching and indexing.
Support for Direct Access URLs – If you are using AWS S3 for storage, then you can use Direct Access URLs to accelerate the local download of content. This feature generates a S3 pre-signed URL for sharing objects.
Secure SDK events gateway – The Event Gateway SDK produces internal events flagged for external consumption. These events are then consumed by the Event Gateway Service and routed to various destinations. This provides the basic framework to support basic event subscription and filtering.
Shared Secret HTTP Header protocol – Shared Secret HTTP Header protocol is a new communication alternative for the existing protocols: Mutual TLS and Plain HTTP. The Shared Secret protocol requires a common shared secret to be configured in Alfresco Repository and Search Services. Once both have been configured, communications will happen using plain HTTP requests using the shared secret property in the HTTP header. This prevents unintended access to searching and indexing requests in the system.
Other features –
- Alfresco In-Process SDK 4.3
- Alfresco Out-Of-Process SDK 5.1.1
We Recommend - Planning to Upgrade
Many of our clients are hesitant to adopt a “x.0” release of any technology, and instead prefer to wait until an “x.1” release before making a move. While we have actually had no particular concerns to advise against moving to 7.0 (and I suspect with the Alfresco PaaS solution that we will continue to see very stable releases even with major upgrades), with the combination of availability of 7.1 and the impending EOM for the 5.2 and 6.2 stacks, we really do believe now is the time to upgrade.
If you’d like to learn more about new Alfresco features and want some assistance planning your upgrade, contact us for a chat! We’re here to help.
