We're getting one step closer to having just a single JGroups program that runs in any environment! There are 3 things that need to be made to make this possible:
- Multiple discovery protocols: this allows for multiple discovery protocols to be present in the same configuration. For example, DNS_PING or KUBE_PING to run in Kubernetes environments, MPING when IP multicasting is available, TCPPING for a static list of members etc. DONE: [1]
- Multiple transports: this can run a UDP and TCP transport side by side. If IP multicasting is not available, we can fall back to TCP. Or, even if multicasting is available, use TCP for one-to-one messages and UDP for one-to-all messages. NOT DONE yet: [2]
- Use GraalVM to compile this down to a native executable. This could be shipped in a Docker image, so it could be run anywhere Docker/Kubernetes is available. NOT DONE yet.
Step #3 is optional, but would help for quick startup times.
Step #2 is not really needed if we know that all environments run in a cloud where IP multicasting is not supported, so we can ship configs with TCP as transport. But if we know that some customers deploy locally, where IP multicasting is available, and others in environments where multicasting is disabled, or in clouds, then multiple transports will be helpful, as we can ship and support a single configuration.
Step #1 is probably the most important one: there are ~13-15 discovery protocols available today, reflecting the wide range of different environments. Being able to ship a config that includes multiple discovery protocols allows us to support a single configuration for many different customers.
In the future, we could think of code that looks at unused/inactive discovery protocols, or even transports, and removes them after some time. Kind of like just-in-time (JIT) optimizations in the JVM...
Feature [1] will be in 5.1. If you want to try this out today, head over to Github [3], clone the JGroups repo and generate your own JAR.
Cheers,
[1] https://issues.redhat.com/browse/JGRP-2230
[2] https://issues.redhat.com/browse/JGRP-1424
[3] https://github.com/belaban/JGroups
