Cache Agents

The purpose of cache agents is to store and serve cache data for the cluster.

The built-in cache provider, TIBCO BusinessEvents DataGrid, calls such agents seeders. The Oracle Coherence cache provider calls them storage nodes.

Dedicated cache agent PUs are non-reasoning agents (one per PU). Cache agents are responsible for object management. They participate in distribution, partitioning and storage of the objects in the cluster.

Tip: Other agent nodes functioning as cache agents.  It is possible, but not recommended, to enable inference and query agent nodes to act as seeders (storage nodes) in addition to their other functions. Using dedicated cache agent nodes for data storage is more efficient and more scalable for production scenarios. Enabling storage on a different kind of agent can be convenient during testing.

When a backing store is used, you can balance what objects to keep in the cache and what to keep in the backing store, until needed.