IdP Cluster

[Cantor, Scott]

On 9/19/11 11:22 AM, "Sukesh Nischal" <Sukesh.Nischal at itslearning.com>
wrote:

>Is there any particular reason Terracotta is documented and promoted on
>the Shibboleth site as the software to achieve IdP clustering with? Would
>it be possible with a Tomcat cluster?

No. Terracotta is documented because that's what it ships with. Tomcat
alone will not work, those sessions aren't used by the IdP so clustering
them doesn't matter.

> IS there a more reliable method?

There are contributions that use memcache, and I believe somebody is
working on one for use with JBoss' Infinispan, which is the current plan
for 3.0.

For myself, I favor stateless clustering, as documented in the wiki.

> I am about to build a tomcat IdP cluster to achieve load balancing and
>redundancy, and just wanted to know if Terracotta has any distinct
>advantages over any other method of clustering the IdP.

Well, the one you're talking about won't work, so it has that
disadvantage...

Terracotta works, but some have found it very complex to set up and
maintain. I didn't even try.

-- Scott