JBoss Remoting in AS Cluster

[medlw]

Additionally to the post in the AS Clustering Community I post it also here:

I configured and deployed a simple  Remoting Application into a 4.2.2 AS and run it successfully (below my  mbean-definition).  I set up a 2-node cluster using the default cluster  configuration by starting each server with "run -c all" (having prooved  that the node did recognise each other). Then I ran over some seconds  hundreds of calls in different threads using different connections. Only  the Server which is contained in thelocatorUrl did respond. Principally  what do I have to do to run the JBoss Remoting in a cluster and observe  some sort of load balancing?

Do I have to use a special  connector or transport? What about Cluster-Policy-Hints like @Clustered(loadBalancePolicy="RoundRobin"....?

Her the simple mbean definition:

<server>

<mbean  code="org.jboss.remoting.transport.Connector"
name="jboss.remoting:service=Connector,transport=Socket"
display-name="Socket  transport Connector">
<attribute name="InvokerLocator">
<![CDATA[socket://localhost:5400]]>
</attribute>
<attribute  name="Configuration">
<config>
<handlers>
<handler   subsystem="cluster">medl.remoting.cluster.server.SimpleInvocationHandler</handler>
</handlers>
</config>
</attribute>
</mbean>
</server>

Thanks in  advance

[ron_sigal]

Hi Wolfgang,

If I understand correctly, you're talking about a pure Remoting example, right?  That is, the client creates an org.jboss.remoting.Client?

Remoting 2 doesn't have any built in load balancing facility, so you'd have to write your own.  There's a failover facility in the transporter code, if you want to look at that. See section "12.9.5. Transporter sample - clustered" of the Remoting Guide (http://www.jboss.org/file-access/default/members/jbossremoting/freezone/docs/guide/2.5/html/index.html) for a discussion.

-Ron

[medlw]

Dear Ron
Yes Your are correct, but we need the cluster not (only) for failover but for load balancing. Though I can deploy my Remoting service into the cluster, it does only work locally.
Is there a possibility to keep the client more or less as it is and put an EJB-facade in-between to achieve the load balancing?

Yours sincerely

Wolfgang

[ron_sigal]

Hi Wolfgang,

To tell you the truth, I don't know enough about clustering to give a definitive answer, but I would say that an important consideration is whether the application is stateful.  Clustering uses caching to share state among machines, so, if you need to share state, I think you would have a lot of work to reach your goal.  In that case, I think you might want to adapt your client to use EJBs, with all of their built in infrastructure, instead of invoking Remoting directly.  If you don't have shared state, then I guess you could just start up a Remoting server in each AS instance, but that still doesn't give you load balancing.  Again, you might be better off using the built in EJB mechanisms.

-Ron