With Terracotta, many JVMs can be harnessed together to act like one big, highly available JVM for your application. Terracotta lets you run a Java application on as many computers as you need, without the expense of databases or custom replication normally needed to share data between computers.
Terracotta is open source software that clusters the Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) that power your Java applications to create a shared memory pool for your application tier that can be used to share data between servers. This shared memory pool can also coordinate the work of many JVMs.
This ability to cluster at the JVM level provides simple, powerful scalability without the bottlenecks that plague existing solutions—and since Terracotta hooks into the JVM rather than your application, you get these benefits with no need to rewrite your application.
PLUG-IN SCALABILITY FOR JAVA APPLICATIONS
Terracotta gives you simple, plug-in scalability and high-availability for mission-critical Java applications. As a plug-in solution, Terracotta injects clustering behavior at runtime into your existing Java code.
With this plug-in capability, your application gets high availability, high performance, and high scalability—all at the same time, without the usual stiff trade offs between simplicity, availabilty, and scale. Plus, you do not need to rewrite your application.
INFRASTRUCTURE SOFTWARE
Terracotta delivers services like high availability and scalability as an infrastructure service to your applications. With Terracotta you can remove the burden of clustering from your developers, and radically simplify your software.
There is no need to change your application to use Terracotta, unlike solutions that depend upon the use of an Application Programming Interface (API). Terracotta uses a simple configuration file that lets you tell it how to cluster your application. There is no code to add to your application to get the availability and scalability you need.
MORE BENEFITS FROM CLUSTERING JVMs
The Terracotta cluster the JVM approach to sharing data between servers has several other operational and cost benefits, to include:
- Linear scalability that drives a higher return on hardware investments
- Reduced operational risk
- Lower development and maintenance costs due to simpler applications
- Faster time to market with new features
- Software developers can focus on making features for customers rather than making infrastructure software
WHERE TO USE TERRACOTTA
Terracotta clustering can be used to add scalability in any number of use cases, including:
