Alfresco ACS 7 Launch Webinar - Q&A

[EddieMay]

During the recent ACS 7.0 launch webinar a large number of questions were raised which we didn't have time to answer on the day. So, below we have all the questions and our responses. If you missed the webinar, it is available on catch-up here.

Question	Answer
Does ACS7 run on Windows OS and if so is there a way to migrate from older Windows based Alfresco to ACS7?	Yes, Windows Server 2019 is supported. Please see: https://docs.alfresco.com/content-services/latest/support/
CentOS 8 EOL is scheduled this year, how are you going to support ACS7.x on CentOS 8 platform down the line?	Please see https://docs.alfresco.com/content-services/latest/support/ for supported platforms. We review these regularly and new versions will be supported in future releases. We still support CentOS 7, which does not EOL (currently) until 2024.
Do you offer SQL Server to PostgreSQL conversion as part of an upgrade to 7?	Not automatically. Both DBs are supported, but it’s down to customers/partners to do the conversion.
Any plans to support the open source MariaDB database?	MariaDB is already supported
Does Query Accelerators only work for Postgres now?	For ACS 7.0 Postgres is our first supported DB due to the number of customers using it. We are already working on adding MySQL, MariaDB and Oracle for an upcoming release
Will Search 3.0 support AWS "Elasticsearch"?	Currently Elasticsearch support is based on Elasticsearch 7.10. Intention is to test and validate against AWS OpenSearch ahead of the GA release.
How does Elastic dropping the open source license for Elasticsearch align with your future direction?	Quite a big question, but in summary the intention was, and still is to give our customers the choice of deployment model for Elasticsearch, including both Elastic and AWS. This will need to be reviewed as AWS develop their OpenSearch product.
Did you mention Alfresco is supported through Containerization, if yes, where can we get it?	Yes, Docker-Compose files and Helm reference charts are provided for ACS 7, as were for 6.
As you're planning to drop SolR, will you produce some procedure/process to not losing huge SolR indexes before swapping?	Elasticsearch is not replacing Solr at this point. Solr is available for ACS 7 with Search 2.0. We will be publishing guidance on upgrading from Solr > Elasticsearch, but it is likely that re-indexing with Elasticsearch will be required. We anticipate improved re-indexing speed for Elasticsearch compared to Solr.
Aren't you afraid that the migration from Solr to ElasticSearch will cause problems for customers who have had specific developments done on Solr?	Migrating customizations from Solr to Elasticsearch is catered for by maintaining the current search API, so the majority of customizations should not require change.
Can we configure both Solr and Elastic but use only one at one point of time?	In theory this could work, but is not supported. It would be interesting to discuss this requirement further.
As Alfresco moves to 7.0, the documentation for 5.x is gone. Many customers are still in version 5.x, as it is difficult to upgrade. Are you going to make that documentation available again?	Yes, 5.2 documentation is converted to the new platform and will be available soon.
For on-premise installations, are you going to release a full-installer for the most important OS's?	The new Ansible Playbooks are replacing the original on-prem installers.
Are complex workflows supported in ACS 7 or should we add APS to our customers when moving from 6.x?	Workflow support is the same in ACS 7 as it was in ACS 6. APS is the recommended Process Management engine for workflow developments.
Will you add Arabic language support?	Not currently on our planned translation list however we will review to assess customer requests
Any plans for Puppet support?	Not at the moment
Is there a community edition of ACS7 and if so is it possible to upgrade from an older community to ACS 7?	Yes, the latest Community edition is the same core as used in ACS 7
Is Alfresco Content Services 7.0 and Alfresco Community Edition on the same release cadence?	Yes, they are built on the same open source core, and customers who purchase ACS are able to take advantage of more advanced features and add additional modules to further extend functionality.
Where are the new releases located?	Review the release documentation for locations for ACS 7.0 or Alfresco Community 7.0 downloads
What is the roadmap ahead for ACS?	We’ve covered in today’s presentation the major themes for our next 2 releases, which subject to change, will be communicated with more details as we get closer to our release dates. Look for future announcements and webinars!
What is the policy of patching the ACS 6 and 5? Should we expect patches to ACS 5 or 6 or should we expect fixes on ACS 7.n version only?	As we have moved to a more frequent release cadence, we expect to have fewer patches &/or hotfixes. At present, no further patches are planned for ACS 5.n and we are evaluating whether or not a final patch for ACS 6.2 might occur.
Can the release cadence support patching security vulnerabilities on time?	With the change to a new release cadence, we hope to make all patches available in a more timely manner.
Does Query Accelerator only work on 7.0?	Yes, after upgrading to 7.0 you will need to create, load & enable the Query Set with attributes, then give it time to populate its tables to enable the feature
What target operating systems do the new Ansible playbooks support?	At the moment we have tested them with RedHat Linux, and CentOS. More Linux variants are in the pipeline, and we will consider adding Microsoft Windows based on customer demand.
Can Ansible playbooks be used when upgrading from earlier versions?	Yes, since the upgrade process requires a new system to be deployed first, the Ansible playbooks can be used to accelerate the process.
Is Elasticsearch supported with ACS 7.0?	Elasticsearch is available with Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0 on an early access basis. General availability is expected later this year. Please contact martin.stanford@hyland.com if you wish to participate in the early access program.
Is the Event SDK released as Open Source, supporting both Community and Enterprise Editions?	Yes, being related to the developer experience the new Event SDK is released as Open Source and it works against the Community Edition as well as the Enterprise Edition.
Is the new elasticsearch, also available for Community edition?	Community support for Elasticsearch is planned, but no release date as yet.
Is the Event SDK working on ACS 7+ or can we expect to use it against ACS 6 and previous versions?	The Event SDK works from ACS 7 ahead, because it is a major version the event SDK has been introduced as part of the repository services.
Is the SDK 4 deprecated? When should we expect to be stopped from being supported?	The SDK 4 is supported and will be supported until the majority of the customers (and partners) move to the new SDK mechanism. The SDK 4 is NOT deprecated and there isn’t a timeline. Of course, the new Event SDK will continue to be enhanced and the SDK 4 will be maintained with the current set of features (but supported).
We noticed with the recent update to the Alfresco Docs website the docs for ACS 5.2 disappeared -- what’s up?	When we migrated the content from our previous website to the new website the format of the documents has changed. As a result our Docs teams are finishing the conversion and the documents are available again.
Is there any roadmap to support natively with AWS Aurora or a solution to have read only DB for get requests and and Read write for other operations? Is there or will there be support for Aurora DB?	Our support of databases on Aurora is based on Postgres.
What is the future of the Share UI? Do you have a date on when it will not be available?	We are still supporting Share, no changes to announce at present.
Currently we are starting to migrate from 3.2 CE to 6.2 EE. We did not start migrating the documents yet. Would it be wise to upgrade to 7.0 immediately? We store about 50 million pdf-documents that need to be migrated. We are also starting creating interfaces using REST-API (cmis) and Tibco BW6, this might benefit from the new Java SDK, to create a Tibco Adapter or is a Tibco BW6 available. Please advise.	For upgrades from earlier versions (pre 5.2) please contact support for advice
What is the plan for Records Management going forward?	Support for governance services and records management has not changed in ACS 7.0
Given the migration to ADF, how long is the Share UI likely to be supported?	We are still supporting Share, no changes to announce at present.
For the new search services 3.0 with ElasticSearch, how will reporting work without Insight Engine?	It will be possible to use the ELK stack and Kibana for basic reporting based on the contents of the index. Work to further enhance reporting options is being planned.
Are there plans to support different Queues besides Active MQ?	Our strategy for best reliability and scalability is Active MQ however customers could choose their own provided it does not make the platform unstable.
Have you designed a new friendly system for UPGRADING from an older version to ACS 7?? About Upgrade to 7.0, is there any tools to upgrade from older version to v 5.2.0 ?	Please define "an older system" as our new docs have a section in them just for upgrades from 5.n onwards. If you're on a version prior to that we recommend engaging Services, or a Partner to help plan your migration.
Right now we are using Alfresco 6.x and the documents created are taking 15 ms to get indexed and returned in search.. Does Elasticsearch solve the latency?	There will always be some latency when using a search engine. The only way to remove this entirely is to use TMDQ rather than querying the search index. However we have optimized for fast availability when designing the Elasticsearch solution, and have seen improved results compared to Solr.
Is it possible to use the Elasticsearch feature if we already have an Alfresco implementation with TMDQ search (without Solr)?	Yes. With Solr queries can be run via TMDQ or Solr, and the same is true for Elasticsearch.
Will an upgrade from ACS 6.x to 7.x override the CMIS object id of existing documents and folders?	No.
Any plans to extend major version releases so on-prem deployments have more time to plan, deploy and upgrade instead of the shorter 2-3 year major release cycles?	Our plan is to still support a release for 3 years from the initial GA date. By moving to a more normal release cadence this should give plenty of flexibility and time to plan upgrades to your environment.
With RHEL 8.2 supported in future, will you publish docker images built on RHEL?	There is no current plan to change the OS inside the containers to RHEL
How can a customer take part in the Elasticsearch EA program?	Please contact martin.stanford@hyland.com for more details. Phase 1 of the program is already underway, but we hope to run a phase 2 with more customers in summer.
About the connector with Office 365, are there any plans to support on premise instances of Office 365 instead of the cloud?	We have no plans to support on premise with the Office 365 connector.
When will you add custom workflows to acs without the need for a developer to integrate the two systems?	APS (Alfresco Process Services) has an editor that aids making workflow creation easy. Our Partners and services teams using our APIs and SDKs have integrated with many systems.
For the community edition is there a way to access all the adf components? like the adf-task list component? Or can you only use the cloud task list?	The task list as well as all the process components for ADF can work against APS only (Enterprise Edition). The process cloud components were working against Activiti Cloud (Community Edition) and APA.
Is there a plan for running multiple REST calls in the same transaction?	We have no plans to support the function.
Alfresco7 supports open jdk 11.0.7 . Is it going to support the latest versions? JDK 17 is right around the corner, when will Alfresco support it.	Our strategy is to follow Oracle LTS with 11 being the current version and 17 will be the next version we support. Watch our supported products pages for more information.
What specific enhancements have been made to the user interface? We are currently on 5.2	We have Share in maintenance mode and have not made any major changes in the UI post 5.2.
Any plans to add PDF watermarking capability to the Transformation services?	No such plans at present. We encourage partners to develop T-engines to support such capabilities which customers then can receive the benefit of.
Does the new release include both Digital Workspace and Share? If so, how can you use metadata from customized content models in Digital Workspace?	Share is in our Community release and ACS 7 includes ADW as part of the packaging as well as Share.
If we don't have Docker allowed in our dev environment, how to develop AMP extensions?	Our support for Docker is not limited to any environment.
Is CMIS standard 1.0/2.0 still supported in ACS 7.0?	We support CMIS 1.1 for browser binding.
Are there any plans for moving Alfresco to the Software as a Service (Saas) model?	Alfresco Cloud already provides hosted facilities.