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Fusion 5.9
    Fusion 5.9

    Fusion 5.9.10

    Released on February 20, 2025, this maintenance release introduces a new Neural Hybrid Search query pipeline stage for Lucidworks AI, support for Kubernetes 1.31, Spark 3.4.1, security updates, and bug fixes.

    Upgrading to the latest version of Fusion 5.9 offers several key benefits:

    • Access to latest features: Stay current with the latest features and functionality to ensure compatibility and optimal performance.

    • Simplified process: Fusion 5.9.5 and later use an in-place upgrade strategy, making upgrades easier than ever.

    • Extended support: Upgrading keeps you up-to-date with the latest supported Kubernetes versions, as outlined in the Lucidworks Fusion Product Lifecycle policy.

    For supported Kubernetes versions and key component versions, see Platform support and component versions.

    Looking to upgrade?

    Check out the Fusion 5 Upgrades topic for details.

    Key highlights

    Introducing the Neural Hybrid Query stage for improved relevance

    Fusion 5.9.10 introduces the Neural Hybrid Query stage, enhancing Neural Hybrid Search (NHS) by refining how semantic and lexical scores are combined in search ranking. This new stage works with Lucidworks AI to ensure that result collapsing and final ranking use a unified scoring approach, leading to more precise and consistent search results—especially in ecommerce, where selecting the most relevant SKU for a product is critical.

    Key benefits include:

    • Smarter relevance ranking: Combines semantic and lexical signals earlier for more accurate ordering.

    • Optimized result collapsing: Ensures the best representative item is selected before final ranking.

    • Broad applicability: Enhances search performance in ecommerce and other scenarios that use result collapsing.

    The Neural Hybrid Query stage differs from the Hybrid Query stage in a few ways. The new stage contains the following new fields:

    • Lexical Query Squash Factor lets you input a value that squashes the lexical query scores from 0..inf to 0..1. This setting helps prevent the lexical query from dominating the final score.

    • Compute Vector Similarity for Lexical-Only Matches computes vector similarity scores for documents found in lexical search results, but not in the initial vector search results. This setting can rescue orphaned nodes by finding docs which match lexically but are not in the vector results, and compute the vector similarity score for those.

    Neural Hybrid Query stage

    This update provides a more intelligent hybrid search experience, improving relevance across a range of search applications.

    Support for Kubernetes 1.31

    Fusion 5.9.10 introduces support for Kubernetes 1.31, bringing enhanced security, improved resource management, and better networking reliability. This update strengthens container security, improves how custom resources are managed and filtered, and enhances the reliability of kubectl operations like exec and port-forward, especially in complex network environments. By upgrading to Fusion 5.9.10, you can take full advantage of Kubernetes 1.31’s advancements for stronger security, streamlined resource handling, and improved system stability.

    Faster, more efficient data processing with Spark 3.4.1

    Fusion 5.9.10 upgrades Apache Spark to 3.4.1, bringing faster query execution, improved data transformation efficiency, and greater stability for distributed workloads. This enhancement optimizes indexing, refines SQL query handling, and ensures smoother analytics workflows, enabling you to process large-scale data with greater speed and precision.

    For more details, see the Spark 3.4.1 release notes.

    Enhanced security and stability

    Fusion 5.9.10 introduces a new wave of security enhancements, ensuring a more resilient and up-to-date platform. This release includes critical updates across core services, including admin, frameworks, apps manager, classic connectors, and query indexing, reinforcing protection across the stack. Additionally, we’ve updated the bitnami-shell base image and upgraded key-tools to v3.0.2, further strengthening security and compliance.

    These enhancements help maintain a robust and secure Fusion environment, keeping your data and infrastructure protected while optimizing performance for mission-critical workloads.

    Bug fixes

    • Solr-exporter pods no longer get stuck in an ImagePullBackOff state, ensuring they pull the correct image and start reliably.

    • The job-launcher and job-rest-server services now start correctly in SSL mode, resolving an issue where missing dependencies caused failures during initialization.

    • Fusion now returns all matching search rules and rewrites in Commerce Studio instead of just the first ten, ensuring complete rule retrieval and better compatibility between the two systems.

    • Prometheus stage execution histograms and counters now include stage labels, making it easier to organize dashboards and interpret stage metrics without relying on auto-generated IDs.

    • Resolved an issue in Fusion 5.9.4 where v2 connectors failed to start in certain self-hosted EKS environments, preventing timeouts and ensuring successful job execution.

    • Increased the request buffer size in lwai-gateway from 250 KB to 5 MB, allowing large messages to be processed without failures.

    Deprecations

    • Fusion has deprecated the Webapps service. In previous versions of Fusion, you could use this service to deploy an App Studio WAR file into Fusion. As of Fusion 5.9.10, you should instead deploy App Studio manually.

    Removals

    Platform support and component versions

    Kubernetes platform support

    Lucidworks has tested and validated support for the following Kubernetes platforms and versions:

    • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): 1.28, 1.29, 1.30, 1.31

    • Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): 1.28, 1.29, 1.30, 1.31

    • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS): 1.28, 1.29, 1.30, 1.31

    Support is also offered for Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE) and OpenShift 4 versions that are based on Kubernetes 1.28, 1.29, 1.30, 1.31. OpenStack and customized Kubernetes installations are not supported.

    For more information on Kubernetes version support, see the Kubernetes support policy.

    Component versions

    The following table details the versions of key components that may be critical to deployments and upgrades.

    Component Version

    Solr

    fusion-solr 5.9.10
    (based on Solr 9.6.1)

    ZooKeeper

    3.9.1

    Spark

    3.4.1

    Ingress Controllers

    Nginx, Ambassador (Envoy), GKE Ingress Controller

    Istio not supported.

    More information about support dates can be found at Lucidworks Fusion Product Lifecycle.