# 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.