Architecture Overview

The Evident ClearStone Live for Oracle Coherence solution consists of the five architectural components:

• Collection Framework
• Data Processing and Analysis Framework
• Operational Cache
• Data Services Layer
• Real-Time Console (user interface)

The following diagram illustrates an architectural view of these components and shows how the different software components relate in the architecture:

click image to enlarge

• Collection Framework – the Evident ClearStone Adapter for Coherence utilizes the cluster management capabilities of Coherence (clustered JMX) to collect performance metrics for all the storage and proxy nodes from a single node within the cluster. By leveraging the management infrastructure already supported by Coherence, this eliminates the need to instrument the Coherence members or servers with monitoring agents. The framework includes a custom MBeanServer and a custom JAR for monitoring TCP-Extend node and client activity for Coherence 3.3.1 clusters.
• Data Processing and Analysis Framework – the Evident ClearStone Pipeline Server is structured as an inline real-time transformation engine designed to aggregate, correlate, and enrich the collected Coherence performance metrics. The embedded pipelines¹ transforms and enhances the raw collected MBean data into processed information that is aggregated and correlated based on analytics and transformations being performed on the raw performance and management data collected from the Coherence cluster.
• Operational Cache – the Evident Operational Cache (OpCache) is the internal “flight data recorder” that enables the caching of collected and processed real-time data. The OpCache is based on an embedded Oracle Coherence cluster. Evident ClearStone Live leverages the benefits of Coherence to increase application performance and scale up the OpCache.
• Data Services Layer – this intermediary layer provides access to the cached data for the Real-Time Console. It is responsible for handling client side requests and publishing updates to the web-based client.
• Real-Time Console – is a Rich Internet Application based on Adobe Flex 3 technology. It provides users with a variety of real-time dashboards and visualization components that are supported by the Evident ClearStone Live for Oracle Coherence solution. (see Real-Time Console).

Implementation / Deployment

Evident ClearStone Live for Oracle Coherence has minimal to no impact to the performance of the monitored cluster. To monitor a cluster, the solution only requires deploying a custom MBeanServer as a non-storage management node within the monitored cluster. For Coherence 3.3.1 users, the TCP-Extend proxy nodes can be instrumented with a single custom JAR to provide real-time TCP-Extend metrics.

The Evident ClearStone Live product can be deployed as a single server solution or multiple servers to scale up to monitor larger Coherence environments. The main server installation includes the Evident Pipeline Server, OpCache, and the Data Services Layer to host the Real-Time Console. The dashboard and visualizations supported by the Real-Time Console can be access from most web browsers equipped with an Adobe Flash plug-in.

The Evident Coherence Adapter should be co-resident with the monitored cluster. It will act as a storage disabled management node. The adapter will utilized the clustered JMX framework in Coherence to accesses the various cluster/node performance metrics. If  TCP-Extend metrics is desired, Evident provides a custom JAR for instrumenting the TCP-Extend Proxy Nodes (for Coherence 3.3.1) within the monitored cluster. All other collected data is obtained via the standard custom Coherence MBeanServer.

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