Document Storage in a Clustered Installation

Sterling B2B Integrator provides the option of using document storage either in a local file system or a database. In cluster mode, the default for document storage is the database since all nodes use the same database, and a business process running on any node has access to the document for processing.

To enable usage of a file system as document storage in cluster, all nodes must have access to the file system where the document is stored and thus need to use an NFS (network file system)-mounted or clustered file system to store the documents, which enables all the nodes to have access to the document.

The mandatory node feature provides the ability to mark a specific step of a business process to be run on a specific node by marking the node where it needs to run. This provides the option to use file system-based document storage (without clustered or NFS-mounted file system) where the line of sight of the document is just to one node. However, if the node where the documents are targeted fails, the business process fails and the business process needs to be re-configured to use a different node. Depending on the business process and the usage of the document, some of the failed business processes can be restarted or resumed, but others cannot unless the node is brought back up.