In memory data grid

An in-memory data grid (IMDG) is a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software product that can be installed on and hosted by compute servers. It's primary function in an information technology (IT) solution, is to provide a datastore that allows data to be created, read, updated and deleted by client applications. Before IMDGs were created, most IT solutions relied upon the use a relational database management system (RDBMS) to provide the datastore component.
An IMDG contains all of the following technology features:
* Scalable - As the datastore grows, additional compute servers with installed IMDGs software, can be added to the system without disruption to the application clients that rely on the data.
* Resilient - Upon the failure of a server, the system is able to re-balance with no disruption to the application clients that rely on the data.
* Performance-centric - The datastore resides in random access memory (RAM) enabling extremely high throughput of transactions. This is often referred to as Extreme Transaction Processing
* Customisable - Use of a development framework, such as or .Net framework, allows customisation of the product to meet requirements.
* Distributed - The data can be distributed like a fabric, across one or more servers, in one or more locations.
* Non-Relational - The data structure is non-relational and uses key-value stores. Access to the data Is via a hash algorithm applied to the key to locate the value.
* Shared Nothing Architecture - A common dataset can be distributed across many nodes, without the need for a shared quorum.
* Replicated - All datasets can be replicated between servers, to provide data consistency.
* Integrated - Provides application programming interfaces (APIs) to application clients, via a development framework,such as Java or .Net.
An IMDG is analogous to the virtualisation of servers and operating systems in IT solutions. Instead of CPU, memory and storage resources being virtualised across a pool of servers, the IMDG enables data to be virtualized across a pool of servers.
Server virtualisation is a key enabling technology for Cloud Computing. It is therefore no surprise to find IMDG's providing the datastore component in Cloud Computing solutions.
Here is a simplified recipe for understanding an IMDG, based on the well established concepts of RDBMS:
# Take a relational database.
# Restructure the database in a way that helps better meet the business need, using a non-relational structure.
# Break up the database into many pieces to form one or more distributed clusters.
# Replicate the distributed cluster topology across one or more locations, to provide resilience and data availability.
# Allow the pieces to be connected to form a fabric and to run in the RAM of all the servers, to allow regular updates to occur.
# Structure and manipulate the data through a series of vendor provided APIs, built on Java and/or .NET application frameworks.
# This is an in-memory data grid.
Products
Below is a list of IMDG products:
* VMware Gemfire
* Oracle Coherence
* Alachisoft NCache
* Gigaspaces XAP Elastic Caching Edition
* Hazelcast
* Scaleout StateServer
* IBM eXtreme Scale
Jboss (Redhat) Infinispan
Reference
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