Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Clustering / Mirroring of frontier/manila?

Author:Samuel Reynolds
Posted:1/20/2000; 3:36:33 PM
Topic:Clustering / Mirroring of frontier/manila?
Msg #:14669 (In response to 14661)
Prev/Next:14668 / 14670

Given xml-rpc, would there be some straightforward way to have a number of mirrored or partially mirrored frontier servers? kept current in near-realtime?

It could be done using Userland's GDB subscription mechanism, or using SMPT/POP transport, or via a "custom" mechanism.

I have put together a generic broadcaster/listener suite specifically for near-real-time information mirroring, using a custom XML-RPC-based protocol. I haven't written all the test cases I want to, so it still needs some testing. I also haven't created a menu to simplify subscribing, unsubscribing, and other operations.

The protocol I've defined basically uses XML-RPC to send an "envelope" of data to local subscribers and/or remote listeners (it doesn't care what's in the "envelope"). The remote listeners then deliver the data to their local subscriber(s), and optionally rebroadcast. I've defined the interface/protocol so that (re)broadcast loops are automatically broken (no infinite rebroadcasts!). The broadcaster code tries repeatedly to deliver each message, with retry counts and timeout backoff (configurable by server or client on a per-listener basis), disconnect of unresponsive listeners, and error handling. No delivery confirmation, as yet; that can easily be added at a later date, if necessary.

Has anyone tried clustering frontier services? or is the application service so integrated with db and http service that it doesn't make sense to break it apart that way?

If someone wants to try out the above suite for automated bidirectional/n-way mirroring, I could email it to you, along with documentation. (Yes, I wrote the documentation so I would have a "specification" to test against; it and the code have developed in parallel.)

- Sam

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