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Reference

Look-up facts for Apache SkyWalking: release and compatibility matrices, ports, configuration keys, BanyanDB groups and default TTLs, supported storage versions, language agents, benchmark results, and a hardening checklist. For how the pieces work see Explanation; for step-by-step tasks see How-to Guides.

Data source

Versions and dates below come from the SkyWalking website release catalog (apache/skywalking-website data/projects.yml), the apache/skywalking changelogs (docs/en/changes/), and application.yml / bydb.yml at tag v11.0.0. Checked 2026-09-25.

Release Matrix

Latest release per sub-project, as listed on the SkyWalking downloads catalog.

Sub-project Latest version Release date Notes
SkyWalking (OAP server) 11.0.0 2026-08-28 "Horizon Ready, Runtime Rule Hot-Update and Live DSL Debugger"; no bundled UI
Horizon UI 1.0.0 2026-08-28 New official UI; image apache/skywalking-ui:horizon-1.0.0
BanyanDB 0.11.1 2026-09-20 0.11.0 released 2026-08-28; required by OAP 11
BanyanDB Helm chart 0.7.0 2026-09-08 Standalone BanyanDB chart; subchart of skywalking-helm 5.0.0
Kubernetes Helm (skywalking-helm) 5.0.0 2026-09-01 OCI chart oci://docker.io/apache/skywalking-helm
SkyWalking Cloud on Kubernetes (SWCK) 0.11.0 2026-09-01 Operator, Java agent injector, custom metrics adapter
GraalVM Distro (experimental) 0.4.0 2026-09-10 Native-image OAP, BanyanDB only
AI Sessionizer 0.5.0 2026-09-24 Conversation-level observability for AI agents
SkyWalking MCP 0.2.0 2026-04-12 Model Context Protocol server for SkyWalking data
SkyWalking CLI (swctl) 0.14.0 2024-10-21
Satellite 1.3.0 2025-02-24 Edge collector / proxy
Rover (eBPF) 0.7.0 2024-10-21 0.8.0 in development (changelog open, unreleased as of 2026-09-25)
Kubernetes Event Exporter 1.0.0 2022-04-25
SkyWalking Eyes 0.9.0 2026-08-28 License-header checker (developer tool)
SkyWalking Infra E2E 1.3.0 2023-11-13 E2E test framework (developer tool)
Grafana plugin for service topology 0.1.0 2023-09-12

OAP Release History (10.x and later)

Version Date Headline changes
11.0.0 2026-08-28 Bundled booster UI and apm-webapp removed, Horizon UI official; new admin-server (port 17128) hosting runtime-rule hot-update, live DSL debugger, inspect, UI-management and status APIs; TLS for every HTTP server with hot reload; OTLP/HTTP receiver; Elasticsearch 9.x storage; BanyanDB API 0.11 required
10.4.0 2026-04-01 OAL V2 engine; MAL/LAL/Hierarchy V2 engine (ANTLR4 + Javassist, Groovy runtime removed); LAL slowSql {} / sampledTrace {} removed; BatchQueue replaces DataCarrier; virtual threads on JDK 25+; default image JDK 25; TraceQL / Tempo API; GenAI and Envoy AI Gateway monitoring
10.3.0 2025-11-10 New BanyanDB trace model (breaking); BanyanDB 0.9.0; Go agent pprof profiling support
10.2.0 2025-03-27 H2 storage removed permanently; BanyanDB 0.8.0 required (breaking); OAP jars no longer published to Maven Central; async-profiler support; AI-pipeline metric baselines
10.1.0 2024-10-07
10.0.1 2024-05-30
10.0.0 2024-05-13 Java 21 runtime support; percentile deprecated in favour of percentile2

Source: docs/en/changes/changes-<version>.md in apache/skywalking.

Compatibility Matrices

OAP and BanyanDB (hard coupling)

OAP accepts an exact list of BanyanDB server API versions (SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_COMPATIBLE_SERVER_API_VERSIONS in bydb.yml). Any other server version makes OAP refuse to start with Incompatible BanyanDB server API version.

OAP Accepted BanyanDB API BanyanDB release
11.0.0 0.11 0.11.x
10.4.0 0.10 0.10.x
10.3.0 0.9 0.9.x
10.2.0 0.8 0.8.x

OAP and Horizon UI (soft coupling)

OAP Horizon 1.0.0 support Extra configuration
11.x Native, full feature set None
10.3 – 10.4 Partial (data plane only) ui.config.templates.mode: readonly and oap.ports.admin: null in the Helm chart
< 10.3 Partial, with query gaps As above

The legacy booster UI's last image is apache/skywalking-ui:10.4.0; no 11.x booster image exists.

Helm Chart 5.0.0 Tested Set

Component Version
OAP 11.0.0 (oap.image.tag, required)
Horizon UI horizon-1.0.0 (ui.image.tag, required)
BanyanDB 0.11.0 (banyandb.image.tag, required when enabled)
skywalking-banyandb-helm subchart 0.7.0
Elasticsearch (ECK-managed) 8.18.8
PostgreSQL (Bitnami subchart, demo only) 15.1.0
Kubernetes in CI v1.28.15 (kind)
Helm 3.8+ (OCI install)

Source: apache/skywalking-helm docs/evaluate/version-compatibility.md.

Storage Backends

Backend SW_STORAGE Versions supported by OAP 11 Positioning (upstream docs)
BanyanDB banyandb (default since the H2 removal in 10.2.0) 0.11.x only Native APM database, recommended
Elasticsearch elasticsearch 7.x, 8.x, 9.x (9.x added in 11.0.0) Large-scale production; high memory and replication cost
OpenSearch elasticsearch 1.x, 2.x, 3.x Same plugin as Elasticsearch
MySQL (and compatible, e.g. TiDB, Aurora) mysql TBD — see upstream storages/mysql.md Medium scale, low trace/log sampling rates
PostgreSQL (and compatible) postgresql 8.2+ (JDBC driver 42.x) Medium scale, low trace/log sampling rates

Not storage backends

H2 was removed in 10.2.0. ClickHouse is a monitored target (otel-rules/clickhouse/*), not an OAP storage option.

Runtime Requirements

Item Requirement
OAP JDK Java 11, 17, 21 or 25 (compiled for Java 11)
Default OAP image eclipse-temurin:25-jre; -java11, -java17, -java21 tag variants
Virtual threads Used automatically on JDK 25+; disable with SW_VIRTUAL_THREADS_ENABLED=false
CPU architectures amd64 and arm64 images (BanyanDB dropped Windows binaries/images in 0.10.0)
Kubernetes install Helm 3.8+ for OCI charts; SWCK needs cert-manager

Ports

Port Component Protocol Purpose
11800 OAP core gRPC Agent data (native protocol, OTLP/gRPC), OAP cluster traffic
12800 OAP core HTTP GraphQL query API, REST receivers, OTLP/HTTP (/v1/traces, /v1/logs, /v1/metrics, since 11.0.0), /healthcheck
17128 OAP admin-server (11.0+) HTTP Runtime rules, DSL debugging, inspect, UI templates, /status/*, /debugging/*; no built-in auth
17129 OAP admin-server (11.0+) gRPC Admin-internal bus between OAP nodes only
1234 OAP telemetry HTTP Prometheus self-observability metrics (SW_TELEMETRY=prometheus)
9090 OAP PromQL service HTTP PromQL API (Grafana data source)
3100 OAP LogQL service HTTP LogQL API
3200 OAP TraceQL service HTTP Tempo-compatible API (module off by default)
9411 / 9412 OAP Zipkin receiver / query HTTP Zipkin v2 ingest / query (off by default)
12801 OAP AWS Firehose receiver HTTP CloudWatch metric streams
17912 BanyanDB liaison gRPC OAP writes and queries
17913 BanyanDB liaison HTTP bydbctl, embedded web UI, HTTP API
17916 BanyanDB gRPC Property-based schema server
2121 BanyanDB HTTP Observability metrics listener
8081 Horizon UI container HTTP UI and BFF (Helm Service fronts it on 80)

Sources: application.yml at v11.0.0; BanyanDB docs/operation/configuration.md at v0.11.0; Helm upgrade guide.

Key OAP Configuration Keys

Environment variable Default (11.0.0) Purpose
SW_STORAGE banyandb Storage selector: banyandb, elasticsearch, mysql, postgresql
SW_CLUSTER standalone Cluster coordinator: standalone, zookeeper, kubernetes, consul, etcd, nacos
SW_CORE_GRPC_PORT / SW_CORE_REST_PORT 11800 / 12800 Core ports
SW_CORE_RECORD_DATA_TTL 3 (days) Traces, logs, sampled records; ignored on BanyanDB
SW_CORE_METRICS_DATA_TTL 7 (days) Metrics and metadata; ignored on BanyanDB
SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_TARGETS 127.0.0.1:17912 BanyanDB liaison address list
SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_USER / _PASSWORD empty BanyanDB basic auth
SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_SSL_TRUST_CA_PATH empty CA for BanyanDB TLS
SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_COMPATIBLE_SERVER_API_VERSIONS 0.11 Accepted BanyanDB API versions
SW_STORAGE_ES_CLUSTER_NODES localhost:9200 Elasticsearch / OpenSearch nodes
SW_AUTHENTICATION empty Shared agent token on the receiver sharing server
SW_CORE_GRPC_SSL_ENABLED false TLS on core gRPC (with _KEY_PATH, _CERT_CHAIN_PATH, _TRUSTED_CA_PATH)
SW_CORE_REST_SSL_* disabled TLS on core HTTP (11.0.0+, hot-reloaded)
SW_OTEL_RECEIVER_ENABLED_HANDLERS otlp-traces,otlp-metrics,otlp-logs OTLP signal handlers
SW_ADMIN_SERVER default (enabled) Set empty to disable the admin host
SW_TELEMETRY prometheus Self-observability exporter
SW_HEALTH_CHECKER default Health checker module (/healthcheck)
SW_TRACEQL / SW_RECEIVER_ZIPKIN / SW_QUERY_ZIPKIN - (disabled) Optional modules

BanyanDB Groups and Default TTLs

OAP creates BanyanDB groups named <namespace>_<group> (default namespace sw, for example sw_metricsMinute). Hot-stage defaults from bydb.yml at v11.0.0; warm and cold stages are disabled by default.

Group Holds Hot TTL (days) Warm TTL (days) Cold TTL (days)
records Sampled records (slow SQL, alarms, etc.) 3 7 30
trace SkyWalking native traces 3 7 30
zipkinTrace Zipkin / OTLP-converted traces 3 7 30
recordsLog Logs 3 7 30
recordsBrowserErrorLog Browser error logs 3 7 30
metricsMinute Minute metrics 7 15 60
metricsHour Hour metrics 15 30 120
metricsDay Day metrics 15 30 120
metadata Service / instance / endpoint lists 15 — —
property Properties (UI templates, config) — — —

Each stage is tunable through SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_<GROUP>_TTL_DAYS, ..._WARM_TTL_DAYS, ..._ENABLE_WARM_STAGE, and so on. Warm/cold nodes are chosen by nodeSelector (type=warm, type=cold). The trace and zipkinTrace groups also carry a tail-sampling pipeline block (disabled by default; sw-trace-sampler keeps errors, traces over 500 ms, and 10% of healthy traces when enabled).

Language Agents and Probes

Agent Latest Date Governance
Java 9.7.0 2026-08-14 ASF (skywalking-java)
Python 1.3.0 2026-08-14 ASF (PyPI apache-skywalking)
Go (compile-time instrumentation) 0.7.0 2026-08-07 ASF (skywalking-go)
NodeJS 0.9.0 2026-06-26 ASF (npm skywalking-backend-js)
PHP 1.1.0 2026-03-16 ASF
Client JavaScript (browser) 1.1.0 2026-03-30 ASF
Rust 0.10.0 2025-07-14 ASF
Ruby 0.1.0 2025-01-20 ASF
Nginx LUA 1.0.0 2024-08-19 ASF
Kong 0.2.0 2022-01-09 ASF
.NET (SkyAPM-dotnet) TBD — Community ecosystem, not an ASF release
C++ (cpp2sky) TBD — Community ecosystem, not an ASF release
Rover (eBPF, C/C++/Go/Rust processes) 0.7.0 2024-10-21 ASF

Other ingestion paths: OpenTelemetry (OTLP gRPC/HTTP), Zipkin, Prometheus via OTel Collector, Zabbix, Telegraf, Envoy ALS / metrics service, Cilium Hubble fetcher, Kafka fetcher, AWS Firehose.

Benchmarks

GraalVM Distro vs JVM OAP (March 2026)

Test: Apple M3 Max, Docker Desktop, 10 CPUs / 62.7 GB, BanyanDB storage; load from Kind + Istio 1.25.2 + Bookinfo at about 20 RPS with 2 OAP replicas.

Metric JVM OAP GraalVM Distro Change
Cold boot 635 ms 5 ms ~127x faster
Idle RSS ~1.2 GiB ~41 MiB ~97% less
Memory median under load 2068 MiB 629 MiB -70%

Source: GraalVM Distro design and benchmarks. The distro README (0.4.0) quotes a ~203 MB binary and a "~512MB memory footprint" for the full feature set, so treat the blog figures as best-case lab numbers.

BanyanDB 0.6.1 vs Elasticsearch 8.13.2 (June 2024)

Test cluster: Elasticsearch 3 master (2 CPU / 6 GB) + 3 data (4 CPU / 8 GB, 50 GB); BanyanDB 3 etcd (2 CPU / 4 GB) + 3 data (8 CPU / 4 GB, 50 GB) + 2 liaison (4 CPU / 4 GB).

System Mean CPU (cores) Mean memory (MB) Mean disk (GB) IOPS (k) Disk throughput (GB/s)
Elasticsearch data 3.2 4147 29.6 115.5 12.8
BanyanDB data 3.6 738 21.6 21.4 3.3
BanyanDB liaison 1.9 62 — — —

Source: BanyanDB 0.6 release blog. This is the origin of the "about 5x less memory, about 30% less disk" claim. It predates the 0.7–0.11 storage rewrites (trace model, vectorized queries, etcd removal); newer single-model and hybrid benchmarks are in the BanyanDB docs under operation/benchmark/.

Upstream sizing hint (backend-storage doc): about 200 services and 200+ calls/s run stably on 2 liaison + 2 data nodes, each 4 vCPU / 8 GB.

V2 DSL Engine and Threading (10.4.0)

Measurement V1 (Groovy / DataCarrier) V2 (10.4.0)
MAL execute baseline ~6.8x faster
LAL compile / execute baseline ~39x / ~2.8x faster
Hierarchy execute baseline ~2.6x faster
L1 aggregation threads (OAL + MAL) 26 10
L2 persistence threads 3 4
TopN persistence threads 4 1
Total OAP threads (2-node cluster, JDK 25) 150+ ~72
Queue buffer slots (8-core) ~13.9M ~7.3M

Source: changes-10.4.0.md (JMH benchmarks and thread-dump comparison run by the maintainers).

Hardening Checklist

Area Recommendation
Agent to OAP Enable gRPC TLS (SW_CORE_GRPC_SSL_* or the sharing-server SW_RECEIVER_GRPC_SSL_*); add SW_AUTHENTICATION token
OAP HTTP Enable SW_CORE_REST_SSL_* (11.0+); keep 12800 behind an authenticating proxy, it has no user auth
Admin server Bind 17128/17129 to a private interface or disable with SW_ADMIN_SERVER=; never expose to the internet
LAL test tool Keep SW_QUERY_GRAPHQL_ENABLE_LOG_TEST_TOOL=false (it evaluates untrusted code)
Horizon UI Configure users (HORIZON_AUTH_LOCAL_USERS or LDAP) before exposure; there is no default login
BanyanDB Enable --auth-config-file basic auth and --tls; set OAP SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_USER / SW_STORAGE_BANYANDB_PASSWORD
Elasticsearch HTTPS, dedicated user limited to SkyWalking indices, network restricted to OAP
Secrets Use Kubernetes Secrets / Vault; Elasticsearch secretsManagementFile hot-reloads credentials; the same for BanyanDB is on the unreleased 11.1.0 changelog
Retention Set TTLs per data type (core TTL for ES/JDBC, bydb.yml groups for BanyanDB)
Dependencies Track OAP releases; 11.0.0 bumped log4j, jackson, netty, kafka-clients, ZooKeeper, Consul client to clear CVEs

Sources