Active-Active Clustering with ThingWorx

Guide Concept

Web applications have increased reliability and performance by using a "pool" of independent servers called a cluster. It is important to understand what benefits the different methods of clustering provide, and what the different methods can mean for your system.

ThingWorx Foundation can be deployed in either an Active-Active clustered architecture or a standard single-server deployment. This guide describes the benefits of an Active-Active clustered architecture over other clustering methods and provides a system administrator with resources to navigate the different architecture options.

• Overview of different server clustering techniques
• Pros and cons of the different clustering configurations that can be used with ThingWorx
• Where to find detailed information about ThingWorx server clustering

NOTE: This guide's content aligns with ThingWorx 9.3. The estimated time to complete this guide is 30 minutes

Step 1: Clustering Overview

Clustering is the most common technique used by web applications to achieve high availability. By provisioning redundant software and hardware, clustering software can automatically handle failures and immediately make the application available on the standby system without requiring administrative intervention.

Depending on the business requirements for High Availability, clusters can be configured in any of the following configurations:

Cold Standby

ThingWorx installed in a default single-server configuration is not inherently a cold standby system. Periodic system backups can be used to bring the system back online in the event of system failure.

Note: A cold standby configuration does not constitute high availability

Active-Passive

High availability can be achieved with an Active-Passive configuration.

One “active” ThingWorx server performs all processing and maintains the live connections to other systems such as databases and connected assets. Meanwhile, in parallel, there is a second “passive” ThingWorx server that is a mirror image and regularly updated with data but does not maintain active connections to any of the other systems.

If the “active” ThingWorx server fails, the “passive” ThingWorx server is made the primary server, but this can take a few minutes to establish connections to the other systems.

Active-Active

ThingWorx uses Active-Active architecture for achieving high availability.

Active-Active configuration differs from Active-Passive in that all the ThingWorx servers in the cluster are “active.” Not only is data mirrored across all ThingWorx servers, but also all servers maintain live connections with the other systems. This way, if any of the ThingWorx servers fail, the other ThingWorx servers take over instantaneously with no recovery time.

Because all ThingWorx servers are active and processing data in parallel, the cluster can handle higher loads than the single running server in an Active-Passive configuration. An Active-Active deployment leverages the investment made in multiple servers by providing not only greater reliabilility, but also giving the ability to handle demand spikes. When server utilizations exceed 50%, customers can easily scale their deployment by adding more ThingWorx servers to the cluster - horizontally scaling. This also avoids the limitations of vertically scaling - provisioning a single server with more and more CPU cores and RAM.

Benefits of Active-Active Clustering

• Higher Availability You can avoid single points of failure and configure the ThingWorx Foundation platform in an Active-Active cluster mode to achieve the highest availability for your IIoT systems and applications.
• Increased Scalability You can horizontally scale from one to many ThingWorx servers to easily manage large amounts of your IIoT data at scale more smoothly than ever before.

Step 2: ThingWorx Active-Active Architecture

An Active-Active Cluster configuration introduce two software components and two components that are optional in a standard ThingWorx architecture are now required.

The reference architecture diagram below shows ThingWorx deployed with multiple ThingWorx Foundation servers configured in an Active-Active Cluster deployment.

Note: This is an example of a possible ThingWorx deployment. The business requirements of an application will determine the specific configuration in an Active-Active clustered environment.

• Load balancer was optional in a single-server deployment, is now a requirement.
• ThingWorx Connection Server is also now required.
• Apache ZooKeeper is used to coordinate multiple running servers.
• Apache Ignite is used to share current state between servers.
  
  

Step 3: Next Steps

Congratulations! You've successfully completed the Active-Active Clustering with ThingWorx guide.

At this point, you can make an educated decision regarding which clustering architecture is best suited for your ThingWorx application. Whether you already use ThingWorx or pursuing ThingWorx, its important to understand how Active-Active clustering is achieved and whether it is right for your system.

Learn More

We recommend the following resources to continue your learning experience:

Additional Resources

To learn more about Active-Active Clustering and general ThingWorx deployment guidelines, there are ample resources available through our Help Center and PTC Community: