WebSphere eXtreme Scale in AS4 Microservice

An installation of AS4 Microservice includes a built-in installation of WebSphere® eXtreme Scale that is used by both production and proof of concept installations. WebSphere eXtreme Scale provides a full set of functions and provides a solution to scalability issues through caching and grid technology. The data grid dynamically caches, partitions, replicates, and manages application data and business logic throughout multiple servers. WebSphere eXtreme Scale performs massive volumes of transaction processing with high efficiency and linear scalability. Additionally, it provides resilience to failure by insulating the system from the underlying database.

WebSphere eXtreme Scale is used by the AS4 Microservice data grid, allowing for quicker access to configuration and transaction metadata during operations. Payload data is stored separately in the Storage system on a shared filesystem. The grid is required for the operation of both production and proof of concept installations of AS4 Microservice.

The eXtreme Scale data grid is elastic, which means the grid monitors and manages itself, allowing scale-out and scale-in, and is self-healing by automatically recovering from failures. Scale-out allows memory capacity to be added while the grid is running, without requiring a restart. Conversely, scale-in allows quick removal of memory capacity. The scale functionality allows adjustments to the number of users that an application can support, without compromising high availability or performance.

WebSphere eXtreme Scale partitions data over two or more machines. When using two machines, half the data is put on each machine, and data requests are routed to the machine containing the data. When you partition the data in this manner across two machines, each machine takes half the overall load and this doubles the performance and throughput of a single machine. eXtreme Scale allows you to partition data across a virtually unlimited number of machines, in which requests are efficiently routed to the machine hosting the required data. WebSphere eXtreme Scale uses the concept of a partition to scale out a cache. Data (in the form of Java objects) is stored in a cache, and each datum has a unique key. Data is put into and retrieved from the cache based on its key.

When you are using eXtreme Scale, you need to enable majority quorum, which is a feature that is supported by WebSphere eXtreme Scale, to take advantage of the stability that it provides clustered systems. Enabling majority quorum ensures that your system is highly available. Majority quorum describes when the number of available catalog members is greater than half at any point in time, even during a partition. Majority quorum prevents split-brain issues in which the system receives conflicting information that it might be unable to accurately or consistently resolve across all nodes in the system.

In a production installation, WebSphere eXtreme Scale is provides high availability and insulates your system from failure. When using eXtreme Scale, payloads are stored in the virtual file system, not in the eXtreme Scale database. eXtreme Scale has a complete copy of your database, containing static configuration information such as trading partners, certificates, and exchange profiles. If the database goes offline, the operational piece containing the file system continues working. This solution provides redundant copies of cache data, called replicas, to help ensure against data loss, and improves data integrity by allowing the data to be replicated in a variety of ways. Therefore, the system is highly available without using a high availability database.

Additionally, eXtreme Scale allows AS4 Microservice to process a large amount of data very efficiently. eXtreme Scale reduces response time by reducing the number of requests to the database. This increases the scalability of your system, providing a single virtual memory space for Java processes, so that data can be accessed quickly. The in-memory database is a copy of your DB2 or Oracle operational database, and this puts as much data as possible into memory. When the data is present in memory, the applications run faster, response times are faster, and application throughput performance is better.

Another huge benefit of using eXtreme Scale is that it processes very large volumes of data processing without affecting system performance. eXtreme Scale can scale to thousands of grid containers, and the grid can easily be extended by adding additional Java virtual machines and hardware. .

When you use eXtreme Scale with a production installation of AS4 Microservice, you need to configure a minimum of 3 catalog members for comprehensive quorum support. For information on enabling majority quorum, see Enabling majority quorum. Additionally, you need to configure at least 2 containers so both have a complete copy of the database. A production node contains up to four members. You must configure an external database and message provider (WebSphere® MQ) for this installation. A production environment is a term used to describe the setting where software and other products are actually put into operation for their intended uses by end users. A production environment can be thought of as a real-time setting where programs are run and relied on for organization or commercial daily operations. You must have purchased a license to install a production node.

In a proof of concept installation, WebSphere eXtreme Scale also is used as the message fabric provider, instead of WebSphere MQ. The message queues are maps within the data grid.