JBoss domain vs JBoss ON

[mohammadwrk]

Considering that management and monitoring capabilities supported by JBoss ON is a superset of the ones provided by JBoss domain, I was wondering if there are any benefits in setting up domains in an environment managed/monitored using JBoss ON? In the other words, is Jboss domain redundant in such environment?

[jaikiran]

Mohammad wrk wrote:

Considering that management and monitoring capabilities supported by JBoss ON is a superset of the ones provided by JBoss domain

I don't have any knowledge of JBoss ON other than knowing what it is. I'm curious about this statement that JBoss ON is a superset of the domain management feature in AS7/WildFly. Is this explained somewhere?

[wdfink]

From the features you might be correct, but a domain will only check that all processes are alive and have a central management for configuration and deployment administration.

JON is different, let me say application, to managage and monitor JBoss instances and also other resources.

I'm not sure whether a domain might be not necessary in a JON controlled environment. That depends on the domain integation here.

I would ask in the RHQ forum for this.

[pilhuhn]

JON and RHQ (its upstream) fully support EAP in standalone and domain mode.

JON driving many standalone EAP nodes can be compared to EAP in domain mode

JON can also drive many domain mode EAPs to support multi-domain.

The point is more here, that JON/RHQ offers additional services on top of what EAP does

* metric collection and long term storage / graphing

* alerting on metrics / availability / ...

And then you also have central configuration management (that uses the EAP management to do the actual changes),

running operations, can deploy applications etc.

JON also allows you to lay down (arbitrary) software on managed machines - you can e.g. provision EAP instances that then join an EAP-domain.

Does that help?

[mohammadwrk]

jaikiran pai wrote:

Mohammad wrk wrote:

Considering that management and monitoring capabilities supported by JBoss ON is a superset of the ones provided by JBoss domain

I don't have any knowledge of JBoss ON other than knowing what it is. I'm curious about this statement that JBoss ON is a superset of the domain management feature in AS7/WildFly. Is this explained somewhere?

On the page below, look for "What are the differences in management capabilities between JBoss EAP 6 and JBoss ON?".

http://www.redhat.com/rhecm/rest-rhecm/jcr/repository/collaboration/jcr:system/jcr:versionStorage/3d6396bc0a070d541845b99dc0244bfd/2/jcr:frozenNode/rh:resourceFile

[mohammadwrk]

Heiko Rupp wrote:

JON driving many standalone EAP nodes can be compared to EAP in domain mode

If this means that it provides central configuration management and administrative console for standalone EAPs then why bother with EAP domains?

[mcroft]

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting using a JON server rather than a JBoss EAP server as the domain controller for a JBoss cluster in domain mode? As you've pointed out, the embedded server in JON is just JBoss EAP, so you get all the same things in there as you would in a JBoss EAP installation.

Technically, there's nothing wrong with using JON as your domain controller and, as that document you posted says, it's a supported configuration. There are still a few things you'll need to bear in mind though:

1. EAP server release
   • The version of EAP may well be lower when embedded in JON. This isn't necessarily the case, but I would expect any critical security updates to take a little longer to be certified for use with JON, since there's an extra layer of complexity to test with
2. Server load
   • If you've got a lot of resources you're monitoring, each with a lot of gathered metrics etc, you're adding extra load to a production server unnecessarily. Even if it's not a problem for performance to begin with, there's no guarantee that won't change at some point in the future.
3. Money
   • It would be worth working out how much you would save by having JON as a domain controller rather than having two separate servers. If it's significant enough, then it is probably something to pursue.

Really, as long as you've considered all the implications like the above examples, there's nothing to stop you from using JON as a domain controller/host master. If you don't save much money on doing it that way, though, I can't see that there is any other real benefit to that strategy. Personally, I would like to keep those two things separate for fewer management headaches when it comes to updates, but that's just my preference!

[pilipenserg]

It would be very useful to get a clear guidance from Red Hat on when do we use JON vs. domain controller and what is the roadmap. I would not want to write automation code and then have to rewrite it later because I chose on or the other and one of these is no longer strategic.

I have tried using JON to start and stop servers on remote hosts via JON agents and it only works less of the time and I can't quite figure out why. Is anybody on this site using JON to remotely control and manage servers or is everybody now using domain controller? (or something else?)