GigaSpaces XAP 7.1 – Making Dynamic Scaling Simple

GigaSpaces XAP will shortly make it possible to set up a dynamic cluster for an application in one API call.

We call this new concept Elastic Middleware Services. The first milestone, the Elastic Data Grid (beta), will be released as part of XAP 7.1 on April 14. It will include all of XAP’s existing data grid functionality, alongside support for Map/Reduce and messaging services.

Using the Elastic Data Grid, users can input their business requirements, and XAP will translate those requirements into middleware configuration, and deploy the data grid cluster automatically. This saves the substantial effort and cost involved in sizing, hardware provisioning, and configuration of distributed middleware.

For example, using the Elastic Data Grid a user can specify the following requirements: “I want to create a data service with 10GB of data that can grow up to 100GB of data, I need hot failover and I'm willing to share my deployment with other users of my own organization but not with users of other organizations.” In response, XAP will deploy the application automatically, configuring it to meet the business requirements. XAP will:

Allocate the right number of data partitions, based on machine availability and the available memory in each machine, to address the capacity required.
Automatically launch a hot backup in for each partition and ensure that it runs on separate machine than the primary partition, to address the high-availability requirement.
Make sure that if another organization’s application is already running on the machine, the application won’t deploy on that machine, to address the security requirement.

Ongoing Adjustment to Meet Business Requirements

When the existing machines exhaust their resources, when a machine fails, when loads increase or decrease, or when additional machines are added to the pool of resources, XAP automatically adjusts the cluster configuration and rebalances the application across the new set of machines. XAP will do everything required to continue meeting the business requirements. Users do not have to manually intervene to make sure there is enough computing power, memory, etc.

Easy Customization for Special Requirements

XAP 7.1’s single API provides a simple, automated deployment solution for the majority of use cases. However, if you have special requirements, XAP is flexible enough to let you write your own custom deployment behavior, through its administration API. The administration API provides fine-grained control and monitoring over all deployment parameters.

The Elastic Data Grid was actually built on top of the same administration API, so you have complete freedom to access the administration API directly, and customize any part of the deployment process. For example, you can specify that upon crossing a certain memory or CPU threshold, the automatic process of adding a virtual machine is overridden, and an alert is sent to operations or system administration teams to do it manually.

Full Integration with Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)

For very large deployments with terabytes of data, placing a substantial portion of that data in memory can be a major challenge. To keep things simple even for the most extreme scenarios, GigaSpaces XAP 7.1 will be certified for use with Cisco UCS, with an online demo and a reference application installed in Cisco’s testing facilities, to help you get started quickly.

Cisco UCS offers very large memory capacity (up to several terabytes) with massive computing power; together with XAP it offers a full scalable stack – from the hardware to the application level – enabling deployment in one API call for even the largest in-memory deployments.

XAP 7.1 also features a new concurrent transaction management for improved utilization of multi-core processors. This comes on the heels of major improvements in multi-core utilization in version 7.0, which resulted in a 300% performance improvement on the Intel Nehalem processor. New benchmarks will shortly be released showcasing the performance of XAP 7.1 on Cisco UCS, which is based on the latest multi-core technology.

World’s First Platform with Built-In Multi-Tenancy

XAP 7.1 is the world’s first middleware platform with built-in multi-tenancy. This not only significantly simplifies your code, it also provides better isolation between multiple users, as well as independent life cycle management for each tenant.

The Elastic Data Grid offers one simple parameter that defines the “isolation level” of your application – allowing you to set up a variety of multi-tenant configurations in one API call:

Dedicated – guarantees a dedicated machine allocated per instance of the application.
Shared private – multiple instances of the application or organization share the same resources, but other departments or organizations are isolated.
Shared public – everyone shares everything.

The Bottom Line: Easier Development, Deployment and Maintenance

The Elastic Data Grid, released as part of XAP 7.1, provides major simplification, reduced effort and cost savings for enterprise applications that require dynamic scalability; multi-tenant and SaaS applications; and deployments requiring extreme performance and very large volumes of in-memory data:

Easier Development – a simpler API which takes the business requirements as its parameters, and does not require the developer to have in-depth knowledge of the underlying middleware and infrastructure.
Easier Deployment – no manual work needed for sizing, hardware provisioning, and middleware configuration to set up a cluster.
Easier Maintenance – XAP maintains the SLA and balances the application continuously, adjusting itself to changing circumstances, with no human intervention. However, it is possible to intervene and make manual adjustments at every stage of the process.

Additional Features in XAP 7.1

Extended in-memory querying capabilities – brings your data grid even closer to the querying capabilities available with traditional databases.
Real-time troubleshooting – administrators can automatically gather dumps and logs from a large number of machines when any suspicious event occurs, or get logs and dumps from an entire distributed system at the click of a button.
First milestone of web-based dashboard – version 7.1 makes a major step towards making XAP’s full management and monitoring GUI accessible using a regular web browser.

Download XAP 7.1 now

What's new in 7.1 (release documentation)

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