Introduction to CCF4XAP

CCF4XAP Stands for Cloud Computing Framework 4 GigaSpaces XAP. It bring the value of cloud computing to existing enterprise applications, relying on GigaSpaces XAP to deliver the core application middleware capabilities. GigaSpaces XAP, the scale-out application server, bridges the gap between on-demand hardware scalability and on-demand application scalability.

CCF4XAP Main Benefits

• No need to re-write your application – you can deploy your application on the cloud as-is, without any special changes to the application architecture.
• Avoiding lock-in to a specific cloud provider – CCF4XAP de-couples the application deployment and its actual deployment environment. The application is unaware of the physical network topology, the machine configuration, or the persistency layout.
• Enabling seamless portability between your local environment and the cloud environment – no code or configuration changes are required between the two environments.
• Develop locally, test on the cloud – CCF4XAP allows you to test the application under heavy loads, large amounts of data, or massive concurrent activity.
• Built for iterative development – you can evolve the application by changing code or configuration, and rapidly deploy each iteration on the cloud.
• Built on top of GigaSpaces XAP – leverage XAP's maturity and robustness.
• Currently supports Amazon EC2 – integration with more cloud vendors is coming soon.

Leverage the Benefits of GigaSpaces XAP for the Cloud Environment:

• Scale-out application server – XAP provides end-to-end scale-out middleware for the web, data, messaging and business logic tiers. It allows you to deploy applications using the Space-Based Architecture, which has been designed to scale stateful applications. An In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG) and in-memory transaction execution provide high-throughput and low latency, avoiding the need to have the database as part of the critical path of the transaction.
• Proven performance, scalability, low latency and reliability – XAP is deployed in the most demanding mission-critical systems, powering highly robust systems supporting large numbers of concurrent users and large volumes of data.
• SLA-driven – a basic feature of XAP is its ability to manage deployed services and the IMDG based on pre-defined service level agreements (SLA). This allows the application to preserve its capacity, maintain deterministic behavior even when there are abnormal failures, and self-heal itself automatically without losing data or interrupting service for active users.
• Unique database scaling solution suited for the cloud environment – XAP provides an IMDG, which can act as a front-end to a running database. The interaction between the IMDG and the database is done implicitly via a generic O/R mapping layer. You can load data into the IMDG explicitly (initial-load) or implicitly (read-through). You can also push IMDG changes into the database immediately, once the in-memory transaction is completed, or as a background process (mirror service) – this removes the database from the latency path, so there's no need to wait for the database to complete processing of a transaction. The IMDG triggers the database using a simple External Data Source interface, and transfers IMDG operations to native database calls – this allowing the application to perform data access operations using native objects and its native data model, without needing to perform complex SQL queries directly against the database.
• Supports leading enterprise languages – XAP is a universal application server supporting the standard Java, Microsoft .Net and C++ development languages; applications based on any of these languages can be deployed in the XAP SLA container. You can even mix these (for example, you can have a hybrid application with legacy portions using C++ and new portions using .Net and C+) – with different components written in different languages sharing and exchanging the same data at in-memory speeds, and without any transformation layers. XAP provides seamless interoperability, allowing objects to materialize in their native environment regardless of their originated runtime environment – an object created by a .Net client can be accessed by a C+ or Java client, and vise versa.

For more details about SBA, database integration, XAP architecture and more, refer to the XAP Product Overview.

How Does CCF4XAP Fit into the Cloud Stack?

CCF 4 XAP fits both into SaaS , PasS and IaaS:

Saas - Software as a Service:

• Easy migration – existing applications can become SaaS enabled easily
• Support hybrid public/private cloud - you may deploy the application in your private cloud and expand it to run on the public cloud
• Support the pay per use model – when the application is running on the cloud the charges are based on the time the application is actually utilizing the machines on the cloud.
• Minimize lock-in – the application does not have any special code or configuration to run one the cloud.
• Multitenant and scalable – can support large number of concurrent clients.

PaaS - Platform as a Service:

• Bridges between on-demand hardware scalability and on-demand application scalability
• Provides full distributed middleware and application development support
• Built-in virtualization for the entire middleware stack – Data Grid, Messaging Grid and Compute Grid.
• Unique solution for database scaling- - front-end In-Memory Data Grid allowing the application to fetch its data from object-based repository and update the In-Memory Data Grid while having the database updated in the background. This ensures the database performance will not impact the transaction execution time. The application transactions are executed in-memory speed.
• Integrate with leading cloud providers

IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service:

• Ideal for aggregating and processing events – ability to consume large amount of incoming events and process these in-memory across large amount of machines, makes it perfect fit to act as a platform for massive events aggregation and processing.
• Built-in monitoring enables fine-gain visibility over the cluster behavior – you may view and inspect every aspect of the application behavior, starting from the containers hosting the application services, down to the object data stored in-memory.
• Reduce time to market – once you have your application tested on the cloud, you may use the cloud as your production environment. You may secure the deployment environment as a private cloud and allow the IT organization to control every aspect of the runtime environment.
• Rich API for cluster management that enable fine-grained control - the underlying runtime allows you to access the hosting container and the services running within it (including the Data Grid) via a powerful API. You may use this API to control the running components via your favorite management tools.
• Enhanced middleware for developing large-scale IaaS infrastructure – the combination of robust cloud environment and scalable application deployment platform allows you to deploy large scale applications that can cope with alarge amount of concurrent users and provide fast response times for any incoming request.

Which Cloud Vendors are Supported?

GigaSpaces XAP currently has integration and cloud tools for Amazon EC2. All instructions in this documentation relate to Amazon EC2, unless otherwise specified. GigaSpaces has also partnered with the following cloud vendors, with full integration coming soon:

• RightScale
• GoGrid – learn more about the GigaSpaces XAP GoGrid offering.
• Flexiscale
• Joyent
• Cohesive FT - Elastic Server On Demand

Next: CCF4XAP Features