Infor ION Grid
The ION Grid is a Java based application server that provides a distributed runtime environment for other applications. Those other applications may, at any time, be added (deployed) or removed (undeployed) from a grid. The distributed nature of a grid means that an instance of the Infor ION Grid may span multiple server machines.
The ION Grid consists of several parts:
Host
A host is a server machine that is participating in a grid. The host may be a physical or a virtual machine. Each grid has at least one host but may have several. A host may be a member of more than one grid.
Hosts operating in the same grid do not have to be running the same operating system as each other. A grid can contain any combination of hosts from the supported platforms.
Bootstrap
The grid bootstrap is a JVM used to install, upgrade, and launch the grid on a specific host. The bootstrap JVM is not owned by the grid but is in fact executed as a service, registered with the operating system. It is designed to be decoupled in this way to allow the bootstrap or the grid agent (which it launches) to fail independently of each other without causing total grid failure.
Grid Agent
Internally, for administrative purposes, a grid needs to communicate with all hosts that it spans. For this reason, each host needs a grid agent JVM running that takes care of this communication. A host has one grid agent per grid it is a member of.
The grid agent is responsible for managing the grid on a specific host. Responsibilities include deployment of applications on that host and starting of nodes and routers.
Registry
The registry is a special type of JVM that is needed when new nodes are started. A grid has exactly one registry. However, a second registry host can be defined and in the event of a primary host failure or inability to start the registry node on that host, the secondary host will start a registry to allow the grid to continue to operate without interruption.
The registry is responsible for maintaining the current topology of the grid and is indirectly involved in the use of distributed objects on the grid. Without the registry node, a grid will continue to operate but new nodes will be unable to start and as such the registry is critical to the operation of the grid.
Router
A router is a JVM which acts as an entry point that client applications can connect to. A router is configured to listen for client requests on a given network interface and with a number of specified ports including HTTP, HTTP(S) and in some cases legacy TCP/IP ports. Normally, the selected port number has to be made accessible through firewalls, when applicable, since it must be reachable from clients.
Administrative Router
The administrative router is a special router used in the grid to manage the administration functions (Configuration Manager) of the grid.
Node
A node is a JVM that is registered as being part of a grid where grid applications are running. A grid typically has several nodes running different applications. Each node is running on one of the hosts that are part of the grid.
Nodes operating in the same grid do not have to be running the same Java version as each other. A grid can contain any combination of nodes running the supported Java versions. A typical example of combining Java versions could be using 32-bit and 64-bit editions together depending on the memory requirements for a specific node or application.