On Oct 6, 2007, at 11:08 PM, Shreedhar Ganapathy wrote:
> Hi Brian
> With Shoal, a set of processes(JVMs) can each have Shoal libraries
> loaded in-process so that components within each process can call
> Shoal apis with individual member names and a common group name to
> communicate with cluster members.
> The Shoal GMS (Group Management Service) core implements
> infrastructure code to support client api calls and a Service
> Provider layer allows for inclusion of Group Communication Systems
> such as Jxta to be used for Group Member Protocols and
> Communication. Shoal's default service provider implementation
> has a set of classes providing group communication protocols over
> Jxta platform.
Okay, so it is just an API over JXTA? Will go pester JXTA folks
then :-) I am much more interested in getting a feel for the
operational characteristics than I am the API. An API is an API,
assuming it isn't as bad as java.util.Calendar, all is good. What it
does at the network layer, what kinds of topologies it can handle,
what liveness characteristics are expected, and how easy/hard it
would be to support non-Java participants are my main concerns.
> In our tests with Shoal and a lightweight client layer, we have
> scaled upto 32 nodes. With GlassFish v2 Application Server, we have
> scaled to 8 nodes in a cluster. Effectively, scaling would vary
> depending on several factors such as available heap space, load
> characteristics of the application that consumes Shoal, and OS type
> (32 bit v/s 64 bit), etc.
So my guess is that a cluster of 1000, 10k, or 100k hosts is right
out the window?
>
> For using Shoal, do take a look at this introductory user guide
> blog entry here : http://blogs.sun.com/shreedhar/entry/
> shoal_clustering_101
I've gone through the guide and preso -- basically everything I can
find short of looking through the code -- which is the next step if I
want to continue to consider shoal, I guess.
-Brian