Components that are bundled with the Sterling B2B Integrator package

Apache Cassandra

Cassandra is one of the core Global Mailbox components and a mandatory requirement. It must be installed on a Linux platform only. It can be installed through the user interface mode or silent installation mode.

Cassandra is used to store and replicate Global Mailbox metadata across the servers in the Cassandra cluster. Both Sterling B2B Integrator and the Global Mailbox management node connect to Cassandra to complete metadata actions. It is important that these nodes have access to the entire Cassandra cluster.

The recommended topology depicts three Cassandra nodes in each data center. The system is designed to balance data redundancy and fault tolerance. For data redundancy, the system always ensures that two copies of data is written within a data center. For fault tolerance, an extra server is required. This allows the system to lose any Cassandra node and still have two remaining nodes for writing two copies of the data.

If your workload requires more than three Cassandra nodes in each data center, you can install the system with more than the minimum recommendation. For more information about Cassandra deployment considerations, see Global Mailbox deployment considerations.

Apache ZooKeeper

ZooKeeper is one of the core Global Mailbox components and a mandatory requirement. It must be installed on a Linux platform only. It can be installed through the user interface mode or silent installation mode.

ZooKeeper is used to create distributed locks and coordinate actions across all Global Mailbox nodes.

A ZooKeeper cluster is known as an ensemble. ZooKeeper requires a majority of the nodes in an ensemble to be functional to provide the required services. Majority is half the number of nodes, plus one. Therefore, it is suggested to have an odd number of ZooKeeper nodes in your Global Mailbox topology. For example, if your cluster has four nodes, ZooKeeper can handle failure of a single node. If two nodes fail, the remaining two nodes, do not form a majority. However, if your cluster has five nodes, ZooKeeper can handle failure of two nodes, as the remaining three nodes form a majority.

The recommended number of ZooKeeper nodes in production is a total of five or seven nodes spanning across data centers.

Sterling B2B Integrator and Global Mailbox management node

Sterling B2B Integrator and Global Mailbox management nodes are core Global Mailbox components and can be installed through user interface or silent mode.

The Global Mailbox management node and Sterling B2B Integrator must be co-located on each server. After installing, the Sterling B2B Integrator node is registered with the Global Mailbox management node by the Installation Manager. Sterling B2B Integrator is required to complete the protocol actions and process the mailbox messages.

For fault tolerance, the minimum number of Sterling B2B Integrator nodes and Global Mailbox management nodes is two. You can add more Sterling B2B Integrator nodes to handle higher workload if needed.