Infinispan Operational modes

Question

I have recently started taking a look into Infinispan as our caching layer. After reading through the operation modes in Infinispan as mentioned below.

1. Embedded mode: This is when you start Infinispan within the same JVM as your applications.
2. Client-server mode: This is when you start a remote Infinispan instance and connect to it using a variety of different protocols.

Firstly, I am confuse now which will be best suited to my application from the above two modes.

I have a very simple use case, we have a client side code that will make a call to our REST Service using the main VIP of the service and then it will get load balanced to individual Service Server where we have deployed our service and then it will interact with the Cassandra database to retrieve the data basis on the user id. Below picture will make everything clear.

Suppose for example, if client is looking for some data for userId = 123 then it will call our REST Service using the main VIP and then it will get load balanced to any of our four service server, suppose it gets load balanced to Service1, and then service1 will call Cassandra database to get the record for userId = 123 and then return back to Client.

Now we are planning to cache the data using Infinispan as compaction is killing our performance so that our read performance can get some boost. So I started taking a look into Infinispan and stumble upon two modes as I mentioned below. I am not sure what will be the best way to use Infinispan in our case.

Secondly, As from the Infinispan cache what I will be expecting is suppose if I am going with Embedded Mode, then it should look like something like this.

If yes, then how Infinispan cache will interact with each other? It might be possible that at some time, we will be looking for data for those userId's that will be on another Service Instance Infinispan cache? Right? So what will happen in that scenario? Will infinispan take care of those things as well? if yes, then what configuration setup I need to have to make sure this thing is working fine.

Pardon my ignorance if I am missing anything. Any clear information will make things more clear to me to my above two questions.

Answer 1

With regards to your second image, yes, architecture will exactly look like this.

If yes, then how Infinispan cache will interact with each other?

Please, take a look here: https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/ISPN/Getting+Started+Guide#GettingStartedGuide-UsingInfinispanasanembeddeddatagridinJavaSE Infinispan will manage it using JGroups protocol and sending messages between nodes. The cluster will be formed and nodes will be clustered. After that you can experience expected behaviour of entries replication across particular nodes.

And here we go to your next question:

It might be possible that at some time, we will be looking for data for those userId's that will be on another Service Instance Infinispan cache? Right? So what will happen in that scenario? Will infinispan take care of those things as well?

Infinispan was developed for this scenario so you don't need to worry about it at all. If you have for example 4 nodes and setting distribution mode with numberOfOwners=2, your cached data will live on exactly 2 nodes in every moment. When you issue GET command on NON owner node, entry will be fetched from the owner.

You can also set clustering mode to replication, where all nodes contain all entries. Please, read more about modes here: https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/ISPN/Clustering+modes and choose what is the best for your use case.

Additionally, when you add new node to the cluster there will StateTransfer take place and synchronize/rebalance entries across cluster. NonBlockingStateTransfer is implemented already so your cluster will be still capable of serving responses during that joining phase. See: https://community.jboss.org/wiki/Non-BlockingStateTransferV2 Similarly for removing/crashing nodes in your cluster. There will be automatic rebalancing process so for example some entries (numOwners=2) which after crash live only at one node will be replicated respectively to live on 2 nodes according to numberOfOwners property in distribution mode.

To sum it up, your cluster will be still up to date and this does not matter which node you are asking for particular entry. If it does not contain it, entry will be fetched from the owner.

if yes, then what configuration setup I need to have to make sure this thing is working fine.

Aforementioned getting started guide is full of examples plus you can find some configuration file examples in the Infinispan distribution: ispn/etc/config-samples/*

I would suggest you to take a look at this source too: http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/getting-started-infinispan where you can find even more basic and very quick configuration examples.

This source also provides decision related information for your first question: "Should I use embedded mode or remote client-server mode?" From my point of view, using remote cluster is more enterprise-ready solution (see: http://howtojboss.com/2012/11/07/data-grid-why/). Your caching layer is very easily scalable, high-available and fault tolerant then and is independent of your database layer and application layer because it simply sits between them.

And you could be interested about this feature as well: https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/ISPN/Cache+Loaders+and+Stores

Answer 2

I think in newest Infinispan release supports to work in a special, compatibility mode for those users interested in accessing Infinispan in multiple ways .

follow below link to configure your cache environment to support either embedded or remotely.

Interoperability between Embedded and Remote Server Endpoints