I am currently responsible for the migration of Akka to version 2.6 on our app.
We would like firstly to keep the “classic” Netty remote and migrate to Artery subsequently. Secondly, we would like to avoid shutting down cluster nodes who are currently running.
Can two cluster nodes with different Akka versions (2.5 and 2.6) and using Netty remote communicate smoothly ? The tests I ran on a virtual platform were not promising.
The Netty based remoting has been deprecated which means it will stay for the whole 2.6 lifecycle and will be dropped for Akka 2.7 though, so it is important that you make some plans for switching over.