NiFi 1 End of Support
What it means for a 1.x estate, and your options.
What NiFi 1 end of support means for your estate
In late 2024 the Apache NiFi project voted to declare end of support for the NiFi 1 line, citing dependencies in 1.x that cannot be upgraded, including Jetty 9.4, Spring Framework 5.3 and AngularJS 1.8 (source: Apache NiFi dev mailing list). The cluster you run tonight still moves data. It is simply nobody's job to fix it any more.
What actually changes
- No more fixes. A vulnerability found in 1.x code, or in one of those dependencies, stays open. How much that matters depends on how exposed your nodes and UI are, and on what your auditors ask.
- Java moves on. NiFi 2 requires Java 21, and the 1.x line was never built for it. Older Java runtimes on your nodes age alongside NiFi itself.
- Audit findings. Regulated teams increasingly see "unsupported software" on a findings list, with a date attached.
- Knowledge gets harder to hire. Fewer engineers want to learn a line that is no longer maintained.
Why it is not a click-upgrade
NiFi 2 removes XML templates and the variable registry, drops several scripting languages from scripted components, and retires or renames a long list of processors and controller services. An estate built over several years has a flow-by-flow job in front of it: inventory, rework, test, cut over.
Your options
- Migrate to NiFi 2. The right answer for most active estates. See our migration approach.
- Shrink first. Retire the flows nobody depends on, then migrate what remains. Every estate has some.
- Move some flows elsewhere. A flow that is really a nightly batch job or a SaaS extract may belong in a different tool. If so, we will say so.
- Hold, deliberately. If you must stay on 1.x for a while, lock it down, document the risk and set a date, rather than drifting.
Where to start
An estate assessment gives you the inventory and the per-flow call. While you decide, we can keep what runs today running. Talk to an engineer.