Solace s Unified Messaging Platform

Transcription

1 Over the years most enterprises have bought and built many different messaging systems to serve as the infrastructure for their distributed applications. Most of these have been based on messaging software running on server platforms that were designed for general-purpose computing, not message processing and network I/O, and each one of which must be separately deployed, managed and upgraded. The incompatibility and lack of synergy between systems translates into higher costs for development and operations, while the limited capacity of a single server results in a large investment in servers and datacenter resources. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform is the first solution that handles all the major types of enterprise messaging in a single purpose-built hardware platform, with a single API and detailed management and monitoring. The Unified Messaging Platform simplifies the messaging infrastructure, improves performance, reduces time to market for new applications and slashes operational complexity and expense. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform supports ultra-low latency data distribution, highvolume fanout, persistent message queuing and WAN-optimized messaging, all with better performance and reliability than software. It also performs related functions required by distributed applications such as content routing, message transformation, caching, and integration with other applications and environments. This document describes Solace s Unified Messaging Platform, including performance highlights, architectural and operational attributes, and resilience. Table of Contents High Fanout...3 Low Latency...4 Guaranteed Messaging...5 WAN Optimization...6 High-Speed Caching...7 Content Routing and Transformation...8 Legacy Integration and Migration...9 One API...10 One Management Environment...10 Copyright 2009 Solace Systems, Inc.

2 Introduction The distribution of information between computer systems has traditionally been handled by software. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform changes the game by managing information distribution in purpose-built hardware. By embedding the data path in silicon and optimizing for performance and resilience, Solace has developed innovative hardware that delivers the following advantages: o Higher performance and predictability By eliminating the limitations of messaging software, operating systems and general purpose servers, Solace s Unified Messaging Platform enables the delivery of large numbers of messages at higher rates and with less latency than other solutions. And since Solace s solution doesn t suffer from the variability or unpredictability associated with software running on an operating system, the Unified Messaging Platform maintains consistent performance characteristics even when processing millions of messages per second. o Lower cost and complexity Each Solace content router can handle the workload of as many as 20 servers. This means it s more cost effective to administer Solace-based systems, and the solution consumes fewer datacenter resources such as rack space, power and cooling. Each content router is a chassis that houses up to ten specialized blades, and each content router can support multiple applications. For example, high speed messaging and guaranteed messaging on one device, giving the advantage of different messaging paradigms within the same footprint accessed via the same API. o Easier manageability Solace s Unified Messaging Platform doesn t rely on software such as an operating system, clustering software, network drivers, hardware drivers, or admin tools. This makes maintenance less complicated since there are no dependencies on layered software, utilities, databases and patches which have to be kept in sync via complicated upgrade procedures. Since all messaging types are handled by one platform, it s easier to identify and address the root cause of problems. o Greater flexibility Solace s content routers are built with network processors and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) instead of software on general-purpose CPUs. Network processors and FPGAs are programmable, which means that their behavior can be altered and new features added in much the same way as other firmware-based datacenter devices such as Ethernet switches and IP routers. This drastically reduces the time and expense associated with upgrading, and provides investment protection. o Superior resilience and fault tolerance Solace s Unified Messaging Platform has been designed with fully-integrated, tightly-coupled features for high availability and general networking robustness, including redundant components, the automatic fail-over of paired devices, the isolation of control and data planes, and per-client queue management. o Greater scalability Since each Solace content router is a self-sufficient asset that can do its job without relying on or impacting software running on servers, Solace s Unified Messaging Platform provides the same linear scalability IT professionals are used to getting from IP routers and switches. o Tighter security Since Solace s Unified Messaging Platform handles message distribution via TCP connections, the platform is more secure than multicast environments. Client machines only receive the data they are authorized to see, unlike a multicast environment where messages published to a multicast group are visible to any machine listening to it. Clients are authenticated via a username/password when they connect to the content router, and can be configured with the topics that they are allowed to subscribe or publish to. Even administrators must authenticate to gain management access to the content router, thereby preventing unauthorized access and changes. 2

3 High Fanout When it comes to messaging, applications want to receive exactly the information they want, at a rate they can manage, without being affected by the misbehavior of other applications. Meanwhile, administrators want simpler infrastructure, isolation of misbehaving applications, and complete control over their environment. The best way to achieve these goals is by sending each message to specific recipients, but historical limitations of messaging software and networks themselves have made doing so unfeasible, necessitating the use of multicast. With multicast, messages are broadcast to everyone on the network listening to that multicast group, and applications filter the stream by ignoring unwanted messages. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform supports the delivery of millions of messages a second to thousands of subscribers using unicast instead of multicast. This eliminates the drawbacks of multicast by enabling point-topoint TCP-based distribution with better performance, scalability, robustness and manageability than multicast. Performance Highlights Solace s content routers handle message ingress and egress through a card called the Network Acceleration Blade, and each NAB supports throughput of 10 million messages per second. This throughput can be distributed evenly between ingress and egress (e.g. 5M in, 5M out) for instances where messages are being passed through on a 1:1 basis, weighted toward ingress (e.g. 8M in, 2M out) for filtration scenarios such as CEP pre-processing, or weighted toward egress (e.g. 2M in, 8M out) for data distribution scenarios where a small number of messages are disseminated out to a large number of subscribers. Architecture and Operation Solace s Unified Messaging Platform receives all messages via a purpose-built I/O card that handles all Ethernet, TCP, message queuing and replication functions in hardware so all the TCP management, timers, keepalives and buffers are taken care of with no OS intervention. Messages are stored on this I/O blade while the topic is passed to the routing blade over a very high bandwidth internal fabric. Since the messages themselves are left on the I/O blade, there aren t any memory copies to/from user space and no context switches. Only the topic string is passed across the fabric, not the message, so the data flow is extremely efficient and routing speed is unaffected by message size. The routing blade uses parallelized hardware to match each message s topic against up to 10 million hierarchical subscriptions, which can also have wildcards. The list of destinations interested in the message is passed back to the I/O blade which sends the message to all consumers that matched the topic. Resilience o Multicast Storms: Solace s Unified Messaging Platform doesn t use multicast, instead routing messages over dedicated TCP connections to the relevant subscribers, so broadcast or multicast storms cannot occur in Solace-based systems. o Speed mismatches and slow consumers: Enterprise IT systems span a wide range of assets and networks, from mainframes with dedicated connectivity to departmental applications running on the corporate LAN to field offices and mobile workers connected over the Web. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform can buffer messages and play them out at a rate each recipient can handle, and queue depths can be configured for each consumer, two features that eliminate the problems multicast environments frequently have with speed mismatches. 3

4 Low Latency The time-sensitive nature of program trading means every microsecond represents differentiation and profitability. Firms are making wholesale architectural changes to their trading systems just to remain competitive. Legacy software running over traditional networks can t keep up with more modern architectures that route, filter and accelerate automated trading activity in hardware. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform can serve as the foundation of an all-hardware market data distribution infrastructure that features the lowest, most predictable latency possible at real-world volumes. Performance Highlights As part of a latency-optimized environment, Solace s content routers enable extremely low, predictable latency, as shown here. The tests that yielded these numbers measured end-toend market data delivery from the publishing feed routed to the appropriate trading applications. The tests were run with 100 byte messages and 12-byte topics to approximate real-world market data payloads and topics, and run for 10 minutes to confirm that system performance remained consistent and predictable under sustained traffic load. Messages/Second Mean Latency 99.9 th % Latency 500, µsecs 41 µsecs 1,000, µsecs 48 µsecs 2,000, µsecs 71 µsecs Architecture and Operation In most ultra low latency architectures, messaging software runs on the publisher and subscriber servers, network protocol stacks are implemented in software and network connectivity is via store-and-forward layer 2 switches. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform can serve as the message routing element at the core of a performance-optimized system. The recommended architecture (shown to the right) removes the bottlenecks and inconsistencies for the best possible performance. o Solace s content router implements the per-client message routing and filtering in purpose-built FPGA-based hardware. o Cut-through datacenter switches accelerate Ethernet packet delivery by streaming packets instead of using store-and-forward techniques. o TCP offload engines accelerate network interactions by moving networking stacks into hardware. Since the entire datapath is in hardware, this configuration delivers the lowest and most predictable latency possible. 4

5 Guaranteed Messaging In many applications, message loss is unacceptable. When software wants to guarantee that messages won't be lost, it needs to temporarily store (or "queue") a copy of the message -- either on the system it's being sent from or on a hard drive. That copy can't be deleted until the recipient has confirmed that they've received the message. Forcing the sender to store it can result in unacceptable backlogs, and persisting copies of each message to disk is a slow process that restricts throughput and causes high latency. It also causes problems when disconnected applications reconnect because catching those applications up places additional demands on the disk system, further reducing performance and increasing latency. In some cases, administrators don't let disconnected applications reconnect during business hours because their systems can t handle it. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform takes advantage of its hardware data path and form factor to enable fully failsafe guaranteed messaging with unprecedented speed and predictability. Performance Highlights Solace s content routers enable performance that s orders of magnitude higher than software-based solutions, with peak throughput of 130,000 messages per second in and 130,000 out and an average latency of 107 microseconds at 10,000 messages per second. This low latency is also remarkably consistent, with tight distribution demonstrated by 99.9 th percentile latency of less than half a millisecond at 100,000 messages per second. Messages/Second Mean Latency 99.9 th % Latency 10, µsecs 136 µsecs 50, µsecs 288 µsecs 100, µsecs 453 µsecs Architecture and Operation When performing guaranteed MQ-style messaging, patent-pending technology in Solace's Unified Messaging Platform temporarily stores messages in high-speed on-board, RAM in two systems for high availability until the recipient acknowledges delivery. It only copies messages to disk if a given target application is offline for an extended period of time and the on-board memory is getting full, and when it does so it copies large numbers of messages in batches to make efficient use of the disk. Furthermore, messages are flushed from RAM to persistent store upon a power failure by specialized circuitry to ensure there is never any message loss. Resilience o Slow / Disconnected Consumers: In the case of slow or disconnected consumers, UMP pushes large blocks of data to disk so the RAM stays available for the high speed connected consumers. A key result, therefore is that slow consumers and message accumulation never impact fast consumers or publishers, even while the slow consumers are catching up. o Content Router Failure: In the case of a single device failure, the mate device will take over as it has all stored messages and delivery state without any risk of message loss, and applications can continue operation within ten seconds. o Datacenter Failure: If both content routers fail (which would typically only happen in a broader datacenter-level outage of connectivity or power) patent-pending techniques are used to flush all data to persistent store, thereby ensuring there is never any loss of data. 5

6 WAN Optimization Enterprise applications require data to be shared across remote geographic sites for various reasons including disaster recovery, performance and scalability, separation of concerns (i.e. divisions and lines of business), and efficient use of computing and network resources. When application traffic flows from a high speed corporate local area network (LAN) to a typical WAN environment, there are a whole new set of issues to contend with, such as bandwidth, latency, availability and security. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform is an overlay to existing IP networks, and Solace s content routers act a lot like IP routers in that they automatically propagate availability and subscription information to each other. This enables them to send information where and when it s needed, and nowhere else, via the shortest possible path through the network. Combined with the ability to compress and decompress messages at wire-speed and fan messages out at the edge of the network, the Unified Messaging Platform provides unparalleled WAN performance. Performance Highlights Solace content routers are capable of servicing up to 130,000 guaranteed delivery messages per second (600 byte message size); beyond the capacity of most WAN links. When incoming data rates exceed WAN capacity, data is buffered in a failsafe manner to a combination of redundant memory and SAN storage. This allows the system to survive spikes in data volume without loss of data. This chart shows typical update rates for asynchronous WAN communications with and without Solace content routers. Bandwidth Mbps 45 Mbps Native Sync Rate (10 ms round trip time) Native Sync Rate (50 ms round trip time ) Solace Sync Rate (any round trip time ) T1 T3 100 msgs/sec 100 msgs/sec 20 msgs/sec 20 msgs/sec 337 msgs/sec 9,830 msgs/sec Architecture and Operation o Intelligent Routing: Solace s routing protocols only send messages where they should go, along the most efficient path so message fanout can be performed at the edge of the network, for optimal bandwidth utilization. For example, if content router A receives a message and client applications connected to routers B and D have subscribed to receive messages with that topic or content, but none of router C s client applications are interested in the message, the message won t be forwarded to router C, saving bandwidth between router A and router C. Similarly, if router D is downstream of router B, only a single copy of the message will be sent from router A to router B; router B will forward the message to its client applications, and will also forward a copy of the message on to router D. o Compression/Decompression: The Unified Messaging Platform supports streaming compression and decompression on a per client basis to reduce WAN bandwidth usage. Wire rate compression rates can be achieved from the Solace content router as a result of compression being implemented in hardware. Resilience o Multiple GigE ports can be combined together via link aggregation or Ethernet bonding to improve robustness to network faults. 6

7 High-Speed Caching It s important for market data distribution systems to cache the data flowing through them because, for example, trading applications frequently need to look up recent quote data, to find the last value, or to investigate recent instrument activity. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform includes a distributed high-speed message caching solution that enables the rapid in-memory storage and retrieval of high-speed data. Access to this caching capability is fully integrated into the Solace API, providing a powerful interface between the application and the cache. For example, applications could request the last 1,000 messages for an instrument, or sensor data from the last 24 hours. The high-speed cache supports requests for individual topics, or groups of topics. Performance Highlights A single instance of Solace s cache supports up to 70,000 lookups per second and can cache data at over 500,000 messages per second for 100 byte messages. Architecture and Operation Solace s caching solution can be deployed as an integrated service on an existing Solace content router, or on separate standalone servers. Cache topics can be distributed amongst multiple cache instances so the solution can be easily scaled to meet your requirements as your messaging rates and topic space grows, and these cache instances can be grouped into "clusters" for load-balancing and redundancy. Cache clustering and topic distribution amongst cache instances is completely transparent to applications. Exactly the same cache request is used regardless of the deployment model, so a system can be rolled out with a simple single-instance cache deployment, and scaled with the addition of more cache instances as requirements grow, all without any changes to applications using the cache. Resilience Solace s caching solution lets developers determine how to handle live data which arrives while a cache request is outstanding. The live data can fulfill the cache request (causing the cache response itself to be discarded), can be delivered to the application after the cache response, or be delivered to the application immediately and followed by the cache response when it arrives. 7

8 Content Routing and Transformation To date, developers building applications that feature large numbers of content routing rules and high message rates have had no choice but to break their message streams into manageable chunks to route by content, or have been forced to use coarse-grained topic-based routing for applications where content-based routing would be a much better solution. Solace s hardware-based approach to content routing is orders of magnitude faster and more predictable than software, allowing developers to integrate content-based routing into their applications, where routing decisions can be based on the full content of the published messages. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform enables sophisticated content-based routing of all forms of content across enterprise and carrier networks. A Solace content router inspects the XML content of every message passing through the router, matches that information with subscribers (applications or people) that need and are authorized to receive the message, and instructs the router to send it to them all in just microseconds. Content Transformation When collecting information from a variety of sources, applications and web services need to receive data in such a way that they can easily work with it. And when providing output to a data feed or user interface, the applications need to make sure the data is sent in a format that their users (people or other applications) understand. Alternatively, it is often necessary to convert newer schemas of messages produced by upgraded producer applications to a previous schema version expected by consuming applications that have not been and have no need to be upgraded. Failure to do so causes input data validation to fail in the subscribing applications. There are various complex ways in which to deal with this, but a very simple way is to have the content distribution system transform newer versions from publishers to older versions for older subscribers operationally very simple and very efficient when performed in hardware. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform performs transformation as an integral part of the message flow. The Unified Messaging Platform can modify message content to meet the needs of different display devices, or even present a subset of the message content to specific users based on their preferences, current device or credentials. 8

9 Legacy Integration and Migration A variety of options are available to integrate existing custom applications and 3 rd party products as well as to bridge legacy messaging systems with Solace s Unified Messaging Platform. Solace offers technologies and tools to facilitate the integration process, and has experience helping clients succeed as they take their messaging infrastructure to the next level. Depending on your starting point, there are various integration options: o For custom applications Some clients have abstracted their applications from the message system API via their own internal interface, which makes it a straightforward matter of converting to the Solace API within their internal interface, and leaving existing applications untouched. o For JMS applications Solace s API supports a Java Message Service 1.1 API, so clients who have used JMS for custom applications can simply migrate to the Solace API by loading the Solace JMS jar files. Also, many 3 rd -party products for applications such as business process management (BPM), business activity monitoring (BAM), change data capture (CDC), and complex event processing (CEP) support JMS as a standard interface and likewise can easily be converted to use the Solace JMS API. o 3 rd -party applications In cases where clients need to export or import data from 3rd party applications or databases that don t expose a JMS interface, adapters are commonly used. Solace has partnered with Adaptris for these types of integration needs. Adaptris provides a flexible adapter framework and comprehensive set of mediation plugins that integrate popular applications, communication mechanisms, data sources, and data structures with Solace s Unified Messaging Platform. o Existing messaging systems Whether migrating entirely to a new messaging system like Solace or employing a cap and grow strategy, messaging bridges are often required either permanently or temporarily to make the transition. Solace s partner Adaptris provides a wide range of bridges for existing messaging products from TIBCO, IBM and others. o Phased migration Clients can rarely afford to flash cut all of their applications from one messaging system to another all at once. In some cases, it is possible to migrate applications with a small number of communicating entities in a staged manner. In others, the above-mentioned adapters can quickly establish bridges from the legacy messaging system to Solace s Unified Messaging Platform while deeper migration is handled safely over a longer period of time as in a cap and grow to the future model. o Management integration Monitoring and troubleshooting is a key ongoing operational activity and therefore special care needs to be taken to integrate the management capabilities of Solace s Unified Messaging Platform with existing processes and tools. Between SNMP, Syslog, command line interface and a Java programmatic management API, and a request/response based element management protocol, there are plenty of options for management integration. 9

10 One API Solace s API is available in multiple languages and for multiple platforms. It provides uniform client access to all of the messaging modes and functionality described in this paper, serving as a one stop shop for all application messaging needs. C Java JMS.NET The C API is targeted at high performance low-latency applications, and provides a low-level API that gives the user total control over the application s architecture. The C API is threadless by design, allowing the user to impose any threading model that they choose. Solace s API is available for Linux, Windows and Solaris operating systems; and i386 and Sparc processors. The Java API provides a powerful objected-oriented interface to the Unified Messaging Platform and is written entirely in the native Java language. The Java API sacrifices some of the flexibility of the C API in favor of a messaging interface which is easily integrated into a Java development environment. The Java API provides support for both low latency and guaranteed messaging. The Solace JMS API supports the JMS 1.1 standard (which is backward compatible with JMS 1.0.2b). Solace also provides an administration console as a component of the Solace SolAdmin management tool which allows management of the JMS Provider and JMS managed objects accessible via JNDI. Solace JMS supports both JMS Topics and JMS Queues. This Windows API provides a convenient object-oriented interface to both reliable and guaranteed messaging services from a.net environment. This API gives.net programmers the same features and functions as are available to C programmers through the C API. In each of these languages, the API supports the functionality that application programmers would expect to find in any messaging product. The learning curve in migrating to Solace s API is straightforward not only from a coding point of view, but also from an overall application architecture point of view. One Management Environment Solace s Unified Messaging Platform provides a comprehensive set of per-client statistics that cannot be collected by software-based messaging systems without incurring significant performance impacts. Many of these statistics cannot be collected at all in multicast environments. For example, at the TCP layer, Solace s Unified Messaging Platform makes available measurements of round trip time, bytes sent and received, queue depths, number of retransmits, and number of packets received out of order. At the messaging layer, UMP provides instantaneous and comparative queue depth measurements, messages transmitted and received per second, and messages discarded due to queue depth problems. This information can help administrators quickly and efficiently identify and address the root cause of a wide variety of issues, regardless of whether they are due to IP network problems or client application problems and avoids the finger pointing which can occur without sufficient diagnostic tools. Solace s Unified Messaging Platform can be managed using command line interface (CLI) or Solace s GUI element manager called SolAdmin. Information and alerts can be sent to management systems using Syslog and SNMPv2 or v3 for events such as hardware faults, threshold crossing conditions and client application activity. Finally, a management API called JSEMP (Java Solace Element Management Protocol) gives customers the ability to integrate the management of Solace s solution into their existing custom framework. 10