Clusters and Replicated Persistence

Setting the persistence type to replicated enables WebLogic to replicate the session state in memory itself. Like the default memory persistence scheme, session data is stored in memory. Unlike the default memory persistence, this scheme works closely with the notion of primary and secondary servers in the cluster, as discussed later in Chapter 14. WebLogic creates the primary session state on the server that a client first connects to, and then transparently replicates the session-state information onto a secondary server instance. The process of copying session state from one server instance to another in the cluster is called in-memory replication. The replica is kept up-to-date so that the secondary server can take over when the original server instance that holds the session data fails.

In-memory session-state replication will work only for those object-valued attributes in the session that are Serializable objects. Changes to the session object will be replicated only if you use the setAttribute( ) and removeAttribute( ) methods on the HttpSession object. These methods ensure that any changes to the attributes of the session are mirrored onto the secondary server for the client. Remember that only nontransient attributes of an object in the session will be replicated to the secondary server. All transient attributes of the object will be ignored.

If you modify the state of an object stored in the session using another object reference, those changes will not be automatically replicated across. For instance, suppose you access a session attribute and modify its value as follows:

HttpSession session = request.getSession(false);
com.oreilly.user.AUser foo = (AUser) session.getAttribute("user");
foo.setName("Ali Cowan");

The changes to the AUser object will be replicated only if you subsequently invoke the setAttribute( ) method:

session.setAttribute("user", foo);

This means that changes to the session data are replicated only after explicit calls to either the setAttribute( ) or removeAttribute( ) methods on the HttpSession object.

2.7.1 Disadvantages of Session-State Replication

Even though session-state replication guarantees failover, there are a few downsides of which you should be aware. There is a slight cost of additional network traffic when the session data is actually replicated to the secondary server. Clearly, the demands on network resources will grow as the number of active sessions grows and as more server instances are added to the cluster. There is also the additional cost associated with serializing the session data every time an attribute is added.

The benefits of HTTP session failover are offset by overheads of additional network traffic due to session-state replication. In Chapter 14 and Chapter 15, we will look at how you can plan for network capacity and manage some of these issues.

2.7.2 Session Replication

Although Chapter 14 covers the use and configuration of clusters, we need to understand a little here in order to fully grasp replicated persistence. In essence, in-memory replicated persistence requires two things:

Redundancy

A secondary server that holds and maintains a copy of the session data

Failover

The ability to let the secondary server transparently take over when the primary server fails

Earlier, we saw that WebLogic handles session replication through its implementation of the setAttribute( ) and removeAttribute( ) methods on the HttpSession object. Now we investigate how the failover is handled transparently.

Transparent failover of session data can occur only when you access the WebLogic cluster through a web server fitted with a WebLogic proxy plug-in, a WebLogic instance equipped with the HttpClusterServlet, or load-balancing hardware supported by WebLogic.

2.7.3 Session Failover

For the software approach to work, you need to use either the HttpClusterServlet or a combination of HTTP servers with identically configured plug-ins. WebLogic currently supports proxy plug-ins for Apache, IIS, and NES. Even though we will talk about session failover using proxy plug-ins, the same discussion holds if you use WebLogic Server with an HttpClusterServlet.

Figure 2-1 illustrates how session replication works in a WebLogic cluster. The plug-in maintains a list of all active servers in the cluster. When a new session is created, the server that handles this request becomes the primary server (Server A in the diagram), and WebLogic will ensure that any future requests are routed to this same server. Thus, sessions are said to be "sticky."

Figure 2-1. Session replication in a cluster

After a primary server has been selected, a secondary server is selected (perhaps using a preferred replication group, which is discussed later in Chapter 14). In our example, Server B is chosen to hold a copy of the session state held in Server A. From now on, all changes to the client's session state in Server A will be replicated to Server B. When the result page is sent back to the client, information is attached that identifies the primary and secondary locations. This information is attached in the form of a cookie or, if cookies are disabled, embedded using URL rewriting.

The interesting bit happens when there is a failure. As the plug-ins hold an active server list for the cluster, a plug-in will know whether the primary server for an incoming request is live. If the server is not live, the plug-in will examine the cookie for the location of the secondary server and automatically route the request to that server. The secondary server now becomes the primary server, and a new server is located and chosen as the secondary server. The session state then is replicated to the new secondary server, and a new cookie (which holds updated locations for the primary and secondary servers) is returned to the client.

In the special case of a cluster having only two server instances, if one server goes down, there will be no available secondary server. Then, if another server does come up at some later stage, it will automatically become the secondary for all the session data.