# Introducing Keycloak.X

DevFeed: [Introducing Keycloak.X](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/introducing-keycloak-x-31580.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.keycloak.org/2019/10/keycloak-x>)

Author: Stian Thorgersen

Published: 2019-10-11T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Keycloak Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/keycloak-blog.md>)

Topics: [Keycloak](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/keycloak.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/configuration.md>), [Scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/scalability.md>), [Quarkus](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/quarkus.md>), [CI/CD](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cicd.md>)

Tags: [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/configuration.md>), [continuous-delivery](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/continuous-delivery.md>), [idm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/idm.md>), [kerberos](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kerberos.md>), [keycloak](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/keycloak.md>), [ldap](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ldap.md>), [openid-connect](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/openid-connect.md>), [quarkus](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/quarkus.md>), [saml](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/saml.md>), [scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scalability.md>), [sso](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sso.md>)

## AI overview

This article introduces Keycloak.X, a planned set of changes intended to make Keycloak leaner, easier to configure and scale, and more suitable for continuous delivery. The plans include a Quarkus-powered distribution, a new storage layer, improved configuration, and support for zero-downtime upgrades.

## Source excerpt

What are we trying to improve? The first stable release of Keycloak was way back in 2014. As always when building software there are things that could have been done better. With Keycloak.X we are aiming to introduce some bigger changes to make Keycloak leaner, easier and more future-proof. A few goals with Keycloak.X are: Make it easier to configure Make it easier to scale, including multi-site support Make it easier to extend Reduce startup time and memory footprint Support zero-downtime upgrades Support continuous delivery This work will be broken into several parts: A new and improved storage layer A new distribution powered by Quarkus A new approach to custom providers Distribution Building a new distribution powered by Quarkus will allow us to significantly reduce startup time and memory footprint. We will be able to create a leaner distribution in terms of size and dependencies as well. Reducing dependencies will further reduce the number of CVEs in third-party libraries. We are also planning to introduce a proper Keycloak configuration file, where we will document directly how to configure everything related to Keycloak. In the current WildFly based distribution the configuration file is very complex as it contains everything to configure the underlying application server, and more often than not it is required to refer to WildFly documentation to figure out how to configure things properly. Storage The current storage layer is complex, especially when deployed to multiple-sites. It has a number of scalability issues like the number of realms and clients. Sessions are only kept in-memory, which can be good for performance, but not so great for scaling when you consider a large portion of sessions are idle and unused most of the time. Exactly what the new storage layer will look like is still to be decided, but we know for sure that we want to: Reduce complexity with regards to configuring, SPIs and schema Support zero downtime upgrades Make sure we can scale