Spring Boot 2.0 hit GA and came with subtle but powerful refinements:
- Embedded Netty support for WebFlux
- Actuator improvements (more endpoints + security config)
- Java 8+ baseline
I found the changes in actuator metrics and auto-config tweaks to be the most valuable. The new
/actuator/metrics gave us visibility into thread pools and garbage collection patterns, right out of the box.We also started experimenting with reactive patterns in WebFlux, though adoption was selective — not all workloads benefit from async.
Pro-tip: Don’t blindly migrate to WebFlux unless your use case fits high-concurrency, IO-bound scenarios.