Terracotta: Open Source Network-Attached Memory
*Please note that Kunal Bhasin, a Senior Solutions Architect at Terracotta, stepped in for Ari Zilka to give this talk.
In this free session we show you how you can get Network-Attached Memory as an appliance-like infrastructure service through Terracotta's JVM-level clustering technology (http://www.terracotta.org). You will learn what Network-Attached Memory is, how it works and how Terracotta can simplify the task of clustering an enterprise application immensely by sharing the heap of the JVM underneath the application instead of clustering the application itself.
JVM-level clustering can turn single-node, multi-threaded apps into distributed, multi-node apps, often with no code changes. This is possible by plugging in to the Java Memory Model in order to maintain key Java semantics of pass-by-reference, thread coordination and garbage collection across the cluster. Terracotta enables this using only declarative configuration with minimal impact to existing code and provides fine-grained field-level replication which means your objects no longer need to implement Java serialization. This session will show how it works and how you can start clustering your POJO-based Web applications (based on Spring, Struts, Wicket, RIFE, EHCache, Quartz, Lucene, DWR, Tomcat, JBoss, Jetty or Geronimo etc.).
Review:
In this talk, Kunal Bhasin explains the concept of using Terracotta's Network-Attached-Memory infrastructure to inexpensively scale Java based applications to greatly simplify the use of networked clusters. The main unique selling point of Terracotta is its JVM-level incorporation, allowing programmers to create applications that are no different that standard programs and use all concepts and frameworks that apply to existing non-clustered applications.
Kunal initiates the talk with the use cases of Terracotta, presenting it as an easy-to-adopt and easy-to-maintain solution when it comes to clustering and scaling Java programs. He describes the underlying principle of Terracotta as being a proxy and is synonymous with Network-Attached-Storage (although in this case, it is memory - not file-level). As a result, the Terracotta libraries can pull several heterogeneous networked servers (server array) together to form a, larger, virtualised environment. The clustered programs that are running therefore see Terracotta as the JVM.
Deeper into the talk, using a spider diagram, Kunal pinpoints the strengths and compromises of Terracotta. It is able to guarantee the consistency of clustered objects whereby changes in state are persistent, due to automatic backup. However, to provide greater scalability, especially when it comes to upgrading existing clusters or constructing large applications, the simplicity has to be compromised.
Review by Jim Li
ABOUT KUNAL BHASIN
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Kunal Bhasin is a Senior Solutions Architect at Terracotta where he has has been instrumental in some of Terracotta’s biggest deployments in terms of scale, performance and availability. He specializes in building and architecting highly scalable, hi
More about Kunal Bhasin
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PODCAST TERRACOTTA: OPEN SOURCE NETWORK-ATTACHED MEMORY
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