NATS v2.14.2

This maintenance release focuses heavily on the stability and correctness of JetStream clustering and data integrity. It resolves potential protocol corruption issues in WebSockets and JetStream acknowledgments, fixes a runaway CPU usage scenario for filestore streams with high subject counts, and refines Raft leader election and quorum logic. Plus, monitoring for leaf node accounts is now more accurate.

Critical Protocol and Routing Reliability Fixes — These fixes prevent rare but critical protocol-level data corruption and race conditions in routing, ensuring that messages and acknowledgments reach their intended destinations reliably without manual intervention or service restarts.

Resource Optimization for High-Subject Streams — Users with high-density streams (many unique subjects) will avoid potential CPU spikes that previously occurred during block skip checks, leading to more predictable performance and stable resource utilization at the edge.

Enhanced JetStream Clustering and Quorum Stability — By improving Raft peer tracking and quorum calculation for multi-IP gateway resolution, NATS clusters become more resilient to network instability and complex DNS configurations, reducing the risk of split-brain or stalled consensus.

Improved Monitoring Visibility for Leaf Node Deployments — Monitoring tools relying on the /accstatz endpoint will now provide a complete view of the system, correctly surfacing accounts that operate exclusively via leaf node connections.