There are many ways of deploying Mule ESB into a production environment. According to the documentation, it appears that running Mule as a standalone service is the recommended way of doing so.
Are there any reasons for NOT running Mule standalone in production? I'm sure its stable, but how does it compare to Tomcat as far as performance, reliability, and resource utilization go?
Should I still consider running it within Tomcat for any reason?
Using Tomcat, or any other web container, allows you to use the web tier of that container for HTTP inbound endpoint (via the Servlet transport) instead of either Mule's HTTP or Jetty transports.
Other differences are found in class loading, handling of hot redeployment and logging.
Now the main reason why people do not use Mule standalone is corporate policy, ie "thou shalt deploy on _". When production teams have gained experience babysitting a particular Java app/web server, they want you to deploy your Mule project in that context so they can administer/monitor it in a well-known and consistent manner.
But if you're happy with the inbound HTTP layer you get in Mule standalone and you are allowed to deploy it in production, then go for it. It's production ready.
Mule actually recommends deploying standalone. Inside a container like e.g. tomcat it has to share the threadpool, heap etc... This can obviously prevent it from performing at it's best.
The main reason you'd want to inside a container like tomcat is to get automatic deployment. I.e. you can just update your Mule application .war and the container will restart mule with the new application. This helps in testing.
Also some transports are specific to running inside a container, like the servlet transport. OTOH when designing solution so Mule transports between your container and your servlets your'e doing it wrong.
Related
I'm working on an architecture to deploy my webapp. I would like to use Google Managed Instance Groups because I have some strict requirements. I was wondering:
which is the best Web container to be deployed in a distributed environment?
I'm familiar with Tomcat, it's Tomcat OK to be deployed in an instance group?
my Webapp running on tomcat will generate logs that will be stored in the current machine hosting tomcat. How should I handle distributed application logs.
I don't want to lose information and I would like to have a single view of all log of my webapp even if distributed, Is it that possible?
Thanks
I have used tomcat in GCP for over a year and it has worked without problems with the load balancer. To solve the issue of the logs you must use an agent to save the logs in stackdriver https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/view/service/agent-logs
What's the difference between OpenShift and Kubernetes and when should you use each? I understand that OpenShift is running Kubernetes under the hood but am looking to determine when running OpenShift would be better than Kubernetes and when OpenShift may be overkill.
In addition to the additional API entities, as mentioned by #SteveS, Openshift also has advanced security concepts.
This can be very helpful when running in an Enterprise context with specific requirements regarding security.
As much as this can be a strength for real-world applications in production, it can be a source of much frustration in the beginning.
One notable example is the fact that, by default, containers run as root in Kubernetes, but run under an arbitrary user with a high ID (e.g. 1000090000) in Openshift. This means that many containers from DockerHub do not work as expected. For some popular applications, The Red Hat Container Catalog supplies images with this feature/limitation in mind. However, this catalog contains only a subset of popular containers.
To get an idea of the system, I strongly suggest starting out with Kubernetes. Minikube is an excellent way to quickly setup a local, one-node Kubernetes cluster to play with. When you are familiar with the basic concepts, you will better understand the implications of the Openshift features and design decisions.
OpenShift includes a distribution of Kubernetes, so if you don't need any of those added features of OpenShift you can choice to ignore them such as: Web Console, Builds, advanced deployment models and much, much more.
Here's a summary of items available on the OpenShift website.
Kubernetes comes with Ingress Rules but Openshift comes with Routes
Kubernetes has IngressController but Openshift has Router as HAProxy
To swtich namespace in cli for openshift is very easy but in
kubernetes you need to create contex and switch between context
Openshift UI has more interactive and informative then Kubernetes
To bake docker image inside Openshift has BuildConfig but kubernetes
don't has any thing you need to build image and push to registry
Openshift has Pipeline where u don't need any jenkins to deploy any
app but Kubernetes don't has.
The easiest way to differentiate between them is to understand that while vanilla K8S is community project, OpenShift is more focused towards making it a enterprise ready product. Resources like Imagestreams, BC, Builds, DC, Routes etc along with leveraging functionalities like S2I, Router etc make it easier for Developers and admin alike to use OCP for development, deployment and lifecycle management. You can refer to the URL https://cloud.redhat.com/learn/topics/kubernetes/ for getting more information on key differences between them.
OCP makes your life much easier by giving easy actions using CLI command OC and fine grained webconsole.
You can try OCP and get first hand experience of the features using https://developers.redhat.com/developer-sandbox
where you can quick get access to sandboxed environment in a shared cluster.
We are experiencing the issue when trying to connect to the cluster after updating the version of Java SDK.
The setup of the system is as follows:
We have a web application that is using Java SDK and a Couchbase cluster. In between we have a VIP (Virtual IP Address). We realise that isn’t ideal but we’re not able to change that immediately since VIP was mandated by Tech Ops. VIP is basically only there to reroute the initial request on application startup. That way we can make modifications on the cluster and ensure that when application starts it can find the cluster regardless of the actual nodes in the cluster and their IPs.
Prior to the issue we used JAVA SDK version 1.4.4. Our application would start and Java SDK would initiate a request on port 8091 to VIP. Please note that port 8091 is the only port open on VIP. VIP would reroute the request to one of the node cluster currently in use the cluster would respond to Java SDK. At that point Java SDK would discover all the nodes in the cluster and application would run fine. During up time if we would add, remove a node from the cluster Java SDK would update automatically and everything would run without the issue.
In the last sprint we updated the Java SDK to version 2.1.3. Our application would start and Java SDK would initiate a request on port 11210 to VIP. Since this port is not open the request would fail and Java SDK would throw an exception:
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException
at com.couchbase.client.java.util.Blocking.blockForSingle(Blocking.java:93)
at com.couchbase.client.java.CouchbaseCluster.openBucket(CouchbaseCluster.java:108)
at com.couchbase.client.java.CouchbaseCluster.openBucket(CouchbaseCluster.java:99)
at com.couchbase.client.java.CouchbaseCluster.openBucket(CouchbaseCluster.java:89)
No further request would be made on any port.
It appears the order in which port are being used has been changed between versions. Could somebody please confirm, or dispute, that the order in which ports are being used for cluster discovery has been changed between versions. Also could somebody please provide some advice on how we could resolve the issue. We are trying to understand the clients behavior, if we could open all those ports on the VIP would the client still then function correctly and at full performance?
The issue is happening on our production environment which we cannot use for testing out potential solutions since it will interfere with our products.
In v2.x of the Java SDK, it defaults to 11210 to get the cluster map to bootstrap the application. This is a huge improvement actually as now the map comes from the managed cache and not the cluster manager (8091). The SDK should use 8091 as a fall back if it cannot get the map on 11210 though. Regardless, you really want to get that map from 11210, trust me. It cleans up a lot of problems.
To resolve this long term and follow Couchbase best practices, upgrade to the Java 2.2.x SDK, get rid of the VIP entirely and go with a DNS SRV record instead. That gives you one DNS entry for the SDK connection object and you just manage the node list in DNS. It works great. I say SDK 2.2 as the DNS SRV record solution is fully supported there, in 2.1 it is experimental. VIPs are specifically recommended against by Couchbase these days. In older versions of the SDKs it was fine to do this and it helped with limiting the number of connections from the app to the DB nodes, but that is no longer necessary and can actually be a bad thing.
in addition to Kirk's long term answer (which I also advise you to follow), a shorter term solution may be to deactivate the 11210 bootstraping (carrier bootstrap) through the CouchbaseEnvironment by calling bootstrapCarrierEnabled(false) on the builder.
I don't guarantee that it'll work with a vIP even after that, but that may be worth a try if you're in a hurry.
Can I deploy Mule on any of the application server. If so how do we deploy the Mule examples.
I have configured my eclipse to run JBoss and Mule Flows dont get deployed in the JBOss server. The syncronisation gives error(null pointer).
But when I run as Mule Application it runs fine but starts Mule Server.
How does Mule deployed in the production? Do we need Mule server in production working along with the application Server?
Can we package all the application in one(ESB + application) and deploy it in the application server.
You have the choice regarding production deployments of Mule:
Use Mule standalone as your first choice, as it comes packed with all modules/transport, is production grade (control scripts...) and supports hot application reloads.
If your deployment environment forces you to deploy on application servers (like JBoss), package your Mule application as a web application (WAR).
If you decide to package your Mule application as a WAR, I strongly suggest you use Maven to do so, as they each Mule module/transport require numerous dependencies. Dealing with this by hand would be insane.
Also be sure to use Servlet inbound endpoints instead of HTTP inbound endpoints otherwise Mule will open another HTTP server inside the web container. You want Mule to use the servlet container for its inbound HTTP requests.
Yes you can. You might want to take a look to the Embedding Mule in a Java Application or Webapp manual page, and the Deploying Mule as a Service to Tomcat.
I am using Intellij IDEA to develop my applications and I use glassfish for my applications.
When I want to run/debug my application I can configure it from Glassfish Server -> Local and define arguments at there. However there is another section instead of Glassfish Server, there is a Remote section for configuration. I can easily configure and debug my application just defining host and port variables.
So my question is why to need for Glassfish Server Local configuration(except for when defining extra parameters) and what is difference between them(I mean performance or etc.)?
There are a number of development work-flow optimizations and automation that can be performed by an IDE when it is working with a local server. I don't have a strong background in IDEA, so I am not sure which of the following they may have implemented:
using in-place|exploded|directory deployment can eliminate jar/war/ear creation in the IDE and deconstruction in the server. This can be a significant time saver.
linked to 1 is smarter redeployment. In some cases, a file change (like changing a jsp or an html file) does not need to trigger redeployment.
JDBC driver integration allows users to configure their IDE to access a DB and then propagates that configuration (which usually includes driver jars, etc.) into the server's classpath as part of deployment of an app.
access to server log files during deployment and execution.
The ability to start and stop the server... even today, you do need to restart GlassFish sometimes.
view the generated Java sources of a JSP.
Most of these features are not available with a remote server and that has a negative effect on iterative development since the break between edit and validate can be fairly long.
This answer is based on my familiarity with the work that we have done for the NetBeans/GlassFish integration. The guys at IntelliJ are smart, so I would not be surprised if they have other features that are available when you are working with a local server.
Local starts Glassfish for you and performs the deployment. With Remote you start Glassfish manually. Remote can be used to debug apps running on another machines, Local is useful for development and testing.