Deciding on a platform

One of the tasks in this new role was to determine which platform to take this application/appliance to. We knew it was to move towards a Java/JEE platform, but we needed to make sure what we were choosing was right for the long term, and had the most viability for expansion and technology.

I have worked with many app servers/web containers in the past, and definitely had my mind on what I wanted to work with, but used the time to research as many alternatives as I could to make sure the conclusion was the right one.

The way this application works, we are relying on being able to plug in new "interfaces" that the core application can talk to - via JMS messaging, etc. The application is built using RoR (Ruby on Rails) with a Postgresql backing store.

Clustering and HA were of a concern as well, but the type of clustering that this application requires was beyond the scope of the normal web/http traffic type clustering that is solved via mod_jk or mod_cluster type solutions - although this can help for certain aspects of it.

JVM-level clustering - such as Terracotta - was also an option, but that didn't really solve what we were looking for as a turn-key solution either - so the decision here is to create our own custom solution, using what was available as a basis for the types of clustering that was needed for that type of traffic. Creating an observer of our JMS cloud(s) to peer for relevant information (via JMX hooks) such as acceptable load thresholds and speaking to other nodes to open/start new modules as need to offset the load.

This is going to be a challenge, but a welcome one. :)

I definitely wanted to utilize the OSGi concepts in creating the daemon like plugins that we would be using, as well as using the framework for monitoring activity, so having that capability was a big factor in the decision making. I looked at other modularity solutions, such as JPF (Java Plugin Framework) and Impala, as well as what Project Jigsaw would bring to the table, but decided OSGi would do well for what we needed.

There were many containers that were looked at, including:

• Glassfish v2 and v3
• JBoss 5 and JBoss 6 (M2)
• Geronimo
• WebSphere
• Weblogic
• resin

and others. The final decision for me boiled down to Glassfish v3 and JBoss 6, because of the JEE6 specifications and where they were headed.

So going forward, we will be building this platform using Glassfish v3 - which is exciting to me, because I always thought Glassfish was a great platform, and coming from the NAS world of old, it was great to see where this was going.

Clustering is a bit of an issue that will need to be tackled, but in reading Bill Shannon's roadmap for clustering in v3.1 of Glassfish, as well as needing to build our own, this was not as much of a deal breaker as I was worried about.

The current application also uses ActiveMessaging to communicate with an ActiveMQ server, and with Glassfish's embedded OpenMQ based messaging system, I think the ability to have as much as we can under one container is a big win in this situation.

Thanks to the support of the Glassfish community, and people such as Arun, Alexis, the Glassfish team (blog and twitter) and the others involved, I think using this going forward is going to a fun and exciting project!