Playing with TerraCotta 2.7.0

Posted by skelter Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:41:00 GMT

I am playing with Terracotta clustering, the way it should be: on different machines.

Obstacle 1 - Binding to non-localhost address

  1. edit top level tc-config.xml <server> entry to bind to the public address
  2. Add a server line to the ClusteredHelloWorld/tc-config.xml to specify the server at that address

Obstacle 2 - Remote terracotta admin console access

Solution:

  1. Double check that the RMI stubs handed out are pointing to the resolvable hostname and not localhost or myhostname.local. See this helpful blog on hostname resolution on linux
  2. Enable authentication. admin console reports a timeout, but you are able to telnet to the port just fine, ruling out firewall issues. Server’s jmx is apparently handing out stubs, but still no joy. Turn on authentication and make sure the properties are set up, and admin console will prompt you for a username and password. See terracotta’s jmx guide. Would be nice if admin console helped diagnose this.

Conclusion - promising

Got the HelloClusteredWorld example going on two different machines hitting the same cluster. It’s a brain-dead hammering of a clustered object so I can see some performance grief, but it seems to be working find. This looks very promising. I am going to have to try some non-trivial prototypes.

Next stop: learn about ehcache.

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Dr. Bart Childs right again: Network Attached Memory

Posted by skelter Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:18:00 GMT

My last year (1995) at Texas A&M University computer science, I had the pleasure of taking a seminar guided by Dr. Childs. One of the things he mentioned was coming was network memory. Your program will be able to address memory locations that refer to memory not on your machine, but over the network on a different machine.

Today, 2008, I am playing with Terracotta at work. It is intriguing. While the fallacies of network computing still apply, this is an interesting approach to clustering an object graph.

It is a wonderful time to be a developer. It is still profitable. The technology makes leaps on an almost overwhelming pace which increase my productivity. My children will probably never know CORBA, DCOM/COM+/OLE.

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