Replication
Replication is a service that transfers data, objects, or events among appservers. Data replication service (DRS) is the internal Server component that replicates data.
Use the DRS to make data for session manager, dynamic cache, and stateful session beans available across application servers in a cluster.
- Session manager uses the DRS when configured to do memory-to-memory replication. Session manager maintains data about sessions across multiple appservers, preventing the loss of session data if a single appserver fails.
- Dynamic cache uses the DRS to performance by copying cache information across appservers in the cluster, preventing the need to repeatedly perform the same tasks and queries in different appservers.
- Stateful session beans use the replication service so that applications using stateful session beans are not limited by unexpected server failures.
When you use the replication services, ensure that the Propagate security attributes option is enabled. Security attribute propagation is enabled, by default.
We can define the number of replicas that DRS creates on remote appservers. A replica is a copy of the data that copies from one appserver to another. The number of replicas that you configure affects the performance of the configuration. Smaller numbers of replicas result in better performance because the data does not have to copy many times. However, if we create more replicas, we have more redundancy in the system. By configuring more replicas, the system becomes more tolerant to possible failures of application servers in the system because the data is backed up in several locations.
Defining a single replica configuration helps you to avoid a single point of failure in the system. However, if the system must be tolerant to more failure, introduce extra redundancy in the system. Increase the number of replicas created for any HTTP session that is replicated with DRS. The Number of replicas property for any replication domain used by the dynamic cache service must be set to Entire domain.
Session manager, dynamic cache, and stateful session beans are the three consumers of replication. A consumer is a component that uses the replication service. When you configure replication, the same types of consumers belong to the same replication domain. For example, if we are configuring both session manager and dynamic cache to use DRS to replicate objects, create separate replication domains for each consumer. Create one replication domain for all the session managers on all the appservers and one replication domain for the dynamic cache on all the appservers. The only exception to this rule is to create one replication domain if we are configuring replication for HTTP sessions and stateful session beans. Setting one replication domain in this case ensures that the backup state information is located on the same backup application servers.
Related concepts
Stateful session bean failover for the EJB container
Memory-to-memory replication
Security attribute propagation
Related tasks
Set cache replication
Replicating data across appservers in a cluster
Related
CSIv2 inbound communications settings
CSIv2 outbound communications settings