Data replication
Replication is a service that transfers data, objects, or events among application servers. Data replication service (DRS) is the internal WebSphere Application Server component that replicates data.
Use data replication to make data for session manager, dynamic cache, and stateful session beans available across many application servers in a cluster. The benefits of using replication vary depending on the component that we configure to use replication.
- Memory-to-memory replication
Session manager uses the data replication service when configured to do memory-to-memory replication. When memory-to-memory replication is configured, session manager maintains data about sessions across multiple application servers, preventing the loss of session data if a single application server fails.
- Dynamic cache uses the data replication service to further improve performance by copying cache information across application servers in the cluster, preventing the need to repeatedly perform the same tasks and queries in different application servers.
- Stateful session beans use the replication service so that applications using stateful session beans are not limited by unexpected server failures.
Important: When we use the replication services, ensure that the Propagate security attributes option is enabled. Security attribute propagation is enabled, by default.
We can define the number of replicas that DRS creates on remote application servers. A replica is a copy of the data that copies from one application server to another. The number of replicas that we configure affects the performance of the configuration. Smaller numbers of replicas result in better performance because the data does not have to copy many times. However, if we create more replicas, we have more redundancy in the system. By configuring more replicas, the system becomes more tolerant to possible failures of application servers in the system because the data is backed up in several locations.
Define a single replica configuration helps us avoid a single point of failure in the system. However, if the system must be tolerant to more failure, introduce extra redundancy in the system. Increase the number of replicas that we create for any HTTP session that is replicated with DRS. The Number of replicas property for any replication domain used by the dynamic cache service must be set to Entire domain.
Session manager, dynamic cache, and stateful session beans are the three consumers of replication. A consumer is a component that uses the replication service. When we configure replication, the same types of consumers belong to the same replication domain. For example, if we are configuring both session manager and dynamic cache to use DRS to replicate objects, create separate replication domains for each consumer. Create one replication domain for all the session managers on all the application servers and one replication domain for the dynamic cache on all the application servers. The only exception to this rule is to create one replication domain if we are configuring replication for HTTP sessions and stateful session beans. Configuring one replication domain in this case ensures that the backup state information is located on the same backup application servers.
Related:
Stateful session bean failover for the EJB container Memory-to-memory replication Security attribute propagation Configure cache replication CSIv2 inbound communications settings CSIv2 outbound communications settings