[Stork-dev] Stork 0.6.0 is now released

Michael McNally mcnally at isc.org
Fri Apr 3 18:08:02 UTC 2020


Project continues on the Stork project and while it is still quite
early in its development cycle, our developers are pleased to share
this milestone with you and would appreciate feedback from interested
users.

The new development release of Stork is 0.6.0 and can be downloaded from:

   https://downloads.isc.org/isc/stork/0.6.0/

Documentation for Stork is available at https://stork.readthedocs.io.

If you set it up, you're encouraged to take a look at the self guided
demo here: https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/stork/-/wikis/demo

-----

# Stork 0.6.0, April 3rd, 2020, Release Notes

Welcome to the Stork 0.6.0 release. This is the sixth development
release of the Stork project, which aims to provide a modern,
responsive, and scalable dashboard solution with a well-defined REST
API interface. The long-term goal of the project is to provide a
monitoring and management solution for BIND 9, Kea DHCP, and more.

Features introduced in this version:

1. **Native Packages**. Stork can now be conveniently installed using
native (RPM and deb) packages. This greatly simplifies both agent and
server deployments. Note these are the initial packages provided;
they're currently optimized for ease of deployment, rather than tight
security, so please review your configuration. In particular, Stork
Agent opens up a grpc port by default; make sure you tune it to meet
your security policy. Two measures to be considered are to modify
your `/etc/stork/agent.env` to limit the IP to listen on, and to
configure your firewall to allow only incoming connections from your
Stork server IP. This will be improved in future Stork releases. The
packages are now available on Cloudsmith
(https://cloudsmith.io/~isc/repos/stork/). #187, #201, #207

2. **Host reservations in Kea**. Stork is now able to retrieve and
display host reservations from Kea. This covers host reservations
both when defined in a Kea configuration file as well as when stored
in a database. The latter scenario requires the use of the
`host_cmds` hooks library to work properly. #188, #223, #214, #210,
#206, #219

3. **Cache Hit Ratio in BIND 9**. Stork now has the capability to use
the BIND 9 statistics channel to retrieve information. As a first
demonstration of this ability, we have implemented cache hit ratio, a
parameter which shows how efficient a resolver is in caching
responses. More parameters will be added soon. #64, #170, #184, #197

4. **Prometheus exporter for BIND 9**. Stork Agent now has the
ability to work as a Prometheus exporter. It can connect to BIND 9's
statistics channel and make the data available for Prometheus. #10

5. **BIND 9 recursive dashboard for Grafana**. Stork now comes with a
Grafana template for BIND 9's recursive resolver. Many parameters are
shown: query and response rates, cache hits, cache misses, cache hit
ratio, and more. The dashboard is inspired by existing BIND 9
dashboards. #10

6. **API Documentation**. While the primary interface for Stork is
expected to be the web UI, the system provides the ability to
integrate with other environments. We provide a rich REST API that
can be used by command-line, monitoring, and similar tools. The
existing API has now been documented properly. #199

## Release Model

Stork has monthly development releases on the first Wednesday of each
month (with some exceptions around holidays). The first major
release, version 0.8, is planned for the spring of 2020.

We encourage users to test the development releases and report back
their findings on the stork-dev mailing list, available at
https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/stork-dev.

This text references issue numbers. For more details, visit the Stork
GitLab page at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/stork/issues.

## License
This version of Stork is released under the Mozilla Public License,
version 2.0.

   https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0

## Download
The Stork source and PGP signature for this release may be downloaded
from:

   https://downloads.isc.org/isc/stork

The signature was generated with the ISC code signing key which is
available at:

   https://www.isc.org/pgpkey

ISC provides documentation in the Stork Administrator Reference
Manual. It is currently available only in the source form in the
docs/ directory, and the Sphinx tool is required to build it. This is
expected to change in a future release.

We ask users of this software to please let us know how it worked for
you and what operating system you tested on. Feel free to share your
feedback on the stork-dev mailing list
(https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/stork-dev).  We would also
like to hear whether the documentation is adequate and accurate.
Please open tickets in the Stork GitLab project for bugs,
documentation omissions and errors, and enhancement requests. We want
to hear from you even if everything worked.

## Support
Professional support for Stork will become available once it reaches
the 1.0 milestone. Existing ISC customers that consider themselves
*very* early adopters may get involved in the development process,
including roadmap, features planning, and early testing, but the
software maturity level does not constitute a typical professional
service before the 1.0 milestone.

Free best-effort support is provided by our user community via a
mailing list. Information on all public email lists is available at
https://www.isc.org/mailinglists/. If you have any comments or
questions about working with Stork, please share them to the
stork-dev List (https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/stork-dev).
Bugs and feature requests may be submitted via GitLab at
https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/stork/issues.

## Changes
The following summarizes changes and important upgrade notes since
the Stork 0.5.0 release.

```
* 50 [bug] marcin

    Corrected a bug which caused unexpected deletion of the
    host reservations fetched from the Kea configuration
    files.
    (Gitlab #225)

* 49 [func] matthijs

    Updated Prometheus & Grafana in the demo installation with BIND 9.

    Implemented BIND 9 exporter in Go and embedded it in Stork
    Agent for showing Cache Hit Ratio.

    Implemented DNS traffic simulator as web app for the demo
    installation. Internally it runs a single query with dig, or
    starts flamethrower (a DNS performance tool) for selected server
    with indicated parameters.
    (Gitlab #10)

* 48 [doc] marcin, sgoldlust

    Documented the use of Host Reservations in Stork ARM.
    (Gitlab #223)

* 47 [func] marcin

    Stork server periodically fetches host reservations from the Kea
    instances having host_cmds hooks library loaded.
    (Gitlab #214)

* 46 [func] marcin

    Host reservations are listed and the UI. It is possible to filter
    reservations by reserved IP address or host identifier value.
    (Gitlab #210)

* 45 [func] matthijs

    Retrieve some cache statistics from named and show Cache Hit
    Ratio on the dashboard.
    (Gitlab #64)

* 44 [func] godfryd

    Added possibility to run Stork server without Nginx or Apache,
    ie. static files can be served by Stork server. Still it is
    possible to run Stork server behind Nginx or Apache which
    will do reverse proxy or serve static files.
    (Gitlab #200)

* 43 [func] marcin

    Implemented data model for IP reservations and detection of IP
    reservations specified within a Kea configuration file. Detected
    reservations are not yet used in the UI.
    (Gitlab #188, #206)

* 42 [func] godfryd

    Prepared scripts for building native RPM and deb packages
    with Stork server and Stork agent (total 4 packages).
    They are prepared for Ubuntu 18.04 and CentOS 8.
    (Gitlab #187)

* 41 [func] godfryd

    Added settings in Stork. They are stored in database, in setting
    table. No UI for settings yet.
    (Gitlab #169)

* 40 [func] godfryd

    Exposed access to API docs and ARM docs in new Help menu.
    (Gitlab #199)

* 39 [func] matthijs

    Update the data model such that applications can have multiple
    access points.  Parse named.conf to detect both "control"
    and "statistics" access point.
    (Gitlab #170)
```

Thank you again to everyone who assisted us in making this release
possible.

We look forward to receiving your feedback.


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