These topics are about how to set up a cluster and perform server farming.

A cluster or server farm is a group of servers that transparently provide enterprise services, such as Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP) support, as if it were a single server. The servers, typically running on separate systems, exchange messages to synchronize data. Therefore, any individual node can process requests for a distributed application and take over a user's session when its node fails. Configuring multiple servers into a cluster is commonly called clustering.

Consider using a cluster of servers when you need to improve the scalability or the availability or your Web applications.

• Clustering improves scalability. You can increase the system capacity by adding extra servers to the cluster. Load balancing is achieved by adding a component, like the remote Apache HTTP Server with the Apache Tomcat JK module that sprays requests to each node in the cluster.
  • Running multiple nodes on the same host, called vertical clustering, is used when limitations in a single node prevent it from fully utilizing the capacity of the host.
  • Running multiple nodes on different hosts, called horizontal clustering, is used to add capacity by adding an additional host. Horizontal clustering is more common than vertical clustering because it also improves availability.
• Clustering improves availability by automatically synchronizing state data among all the nodes in the cluster. If any node in the cluster fails, any other node in the cluster can process the subsequent requests. This process, typically called failover, occurs on subsequent requests. Any requests being processed by a node when it fails will still be lost.

This section is organized as follows:

• EJB failover — In Geronimo, you can configure OpenEJB for failover scenarios http://openejb.apache.org/3.0/failover.html, such as multipoint and multicast. Further more, Geronimo uses WADI to support failover for Stateful Session Bean (SFSB) in a unicast way.
• Farming using Deployment — A configuration can be deployed to a cluster of Geronimo servers by using a single logical deployment step.
• JMS clustering in Geronimo — JMS clustering in Geronimo is handled by ActiveMQ component using blueprint services.
• Plugin based Farming
• Tomcat Native Clustering — The Tomcat Web container provides a native clustering solution that can be configured through Geronimo by using gbean definitions within config.xml or by using server.xml starting from v2.2 just like you did for a standalone Tomcat server.
• WADI Clustering — Staring from Geronimo version 2.2, Web applications and Stateful SessionBeans can be clustered by WADI.