Tuesday
Mar172009
IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale (IMDG)
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 11:08PM
IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale is IBMs in memory data grid product (IMDG). It can be used as a key-value store which partitions the keys (using a form of consistent hashing) over a set of servers such that each server is responsible for a subset of the keys. It automatically handles replication which can be either synchronous of asynchronous and handles advanced placement so that replicas can be placed in different physical zones when compared to the placement of the primary. Think buildings, racks, floor, data centers.
It is fully elastic in that servers can be added and removed and it automatically redistributes the partition primaries and backups. It can be scaled from one server to hundreds if not thousands of JVMs in a single grid. Each additional server provides more CPU, memory capacity and network and it scales linearly with grid growth.
It also has a key-graph mode where a graph of objects can be associated with a single key and it allows fine grained modification of that graph. The object graph and key is stored in tuple form in this mode. This allows clients using different object representations of some subset of the IMDG schema to share data stored in the IMDG.
It comes with automatic integration with databases so that values are automatically pulled from a database if not present and are written to the database when they change. Write behind logic allows writes to the database to be much more efficient and allows the grid to run with the database down.
It comes with a HTTP Session filter to provide HTTP Session management for servlet containers. It have a flexible deployment model allowing a lot of customization by customers.
We do a weekly video podcast on iTunes (search for extreme scale in iTunes) and make it available on YouTube also for customer education. We answer customer questions and forum topics from the week in a casual two person chat forum.
It is fully elastic in that servers can be added and removed and it automatically redistributes the partition primaries and backups. It can be scaled from one server to hundreds if not thousands of JVMs in a single grid. Each additional server provides more CPU, memory capacity and network and it scales linearly with grid growth.
It also has a key-graph mode where a graph of objects can be associated with a single key and it allows fine grained modification of that graph. The object graph and key is stored in tuple form in this mode. This allows clients using different object representations of some subset of the IMDG schema to share data stored in the IMDG.
It comes with automatic integration with databases so that values are automatically pulled from a database if not present and are written to the database when they change. Write behind logic allows writes to the database to be much more efficient and allows the grid to run with the database down.
It comes with a HTTP Session filter to provide HTTP Session management for servlet containers. It have a flexible deployment model allowing a lot of customization by customers.
We do a weekly video podcast on iTunes (search for extreme scale in iTunes) and make it available on YouTube also for customer education. We answer customer questions and forum topics from the week in a casual two person chat forum.
Reader Comments (4)
This looks like a Coherence clone. Does it have anything unique to offer?
I wouldn't call it a clone, it's a competitor in the IMDG space. Thats like calling Oracle or mysql a DB2 clone. Not that fair. Feature wise, both products have strengths in different areas. Features that we had first would be key-graph (our EntityManager APIs) and zone based placement. We have a processing unit concept (we call it fixed container placement in the docs) which is similar to processing units in gigaspaces. We integrate tightly with WebSphere Application Server also for the tens of thousands of customers with that product but WebSphere eXtreme Scale requires nothing more than a JVM to get started.
Thanks
Chief Architect, IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale
Do You have any document that describe IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale Memory Consistency Model?
Because that is very hard to use IMDG as Shared Memory without any knowledge of its MemModel.
Thanks.
Supported on which IBM platforms? "...requires nothing more than a JVM to get started...." implies, say, IBM i, right?