Best Practices for a Production Environment

To use the ActiveSpaces software in a production environment, deploy the following processes.

Processes Minimum Required Description
Realm service Three (you need at least three processes to run a full quorum.)

TIBCO recommends that you run a fault-tolerant set of realm services. Run a quorum of realm services. Each realm service must be run on separate host computers.

TIBCO also recommends that you host the realm service, state keeper, and administrative service on Core Servers.

State keeper Three state keeper processes

To ensure high availability during a network partition or hardware failure, each state keeper process must run on a separate host computer. Not doing so might result in grid-wide data loss. At any given time, you must maintain a quorum of running state keepers. To run more than one state keeper, configure three state keepers and ensure you have at least two running state keepers.

TIBCO recommends that you host the realm service, state keeper, and administration service on Core Servers.

Node Two nodes per copyset For greater data protection, you can run three nodes per copyset. In a fault tolerant setup, if more than one node is present, one node acts as a primary node and the other nodes are secondary nodes.
Note: Additional copies can become expensive in two ways: Increasing the node count by one adds one complete copy of all the data.
Every node process must run on a separate host computer. Usually this requirement determines the number of host computers that you must maintain. For example, a data grid with three copysets and two nodes per copyset requires six nodes, all on separate hosts. Increasing to three nodes per copyset would require nine nodes, all on separate hosts.
Proxy One proxy process You can run additional proxies to increase the capacity for client programs and to improve response time. For best results, run proxy processes on a separate host computer.
Administration Daemon or Service One or Three You can either run administration daemons or administration services. The minimum number of administration daemons is one. However, if you choose to use administration services, the minimum number is 3, one for each TIBCO FTL server.
Your application programs Run as many processes as appropriate.  

TIBCO recommends to run the state keepers and administration services as services by TIBCO FTL servers. When the TIBCO FTL servers are configured like this, they are known as ActiveSpaces Core Servers.

Components Sharing a Host Computer

You can reduce the number of host computers in a production environment by running more than one component per host.

For example, on one host, run a realm service, a state keeper, a node, and a proxy. (In contrast, do not run two state keepers on the same host.) For effective fault tolerance, run the nodes of each copyset on separate host computers.

Warning: Combining component processes on a host computer increases the risk that a single point of failure on the host can disrupt all those processes simultaneously. Assess the risk tolerance of your enterprise.

Best Practices for Cloud Environments

For cloud environments, TIBCO recommends that you use a persistent, local Solid-State Drive (SSD) type that provides consistent performance and does not artificially throttle the Input Output Operations per Second (IOPS). An example of throttling IOPS is the burst throttling done by gp2 SSD types on AWS. For more information about different EBS volume types provided by Amazon, look for "Amazon EBS Volume Types" on https://docs.aws.amazon.com. For information about monitoring the performance of your EBS volume, look for "EBS Performance - I/O Characteristics and Monitoring" on https://docs.aws.amazon.com.